News & Publications

Dr. Paul Ngheim, professor and head of the UW Medicine Division of Dermatology, recently gave the keynote lecture at the 17th annual Wallace H. Clark, Jr., MD Lectureship in Cutaneous Oncology and Melanoma Symposium, held virtually on Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. Dr. Nghiem focused his lect...

A recent study titled, “Merkel Cell Carcinoma: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Top 100 Cited Publications,” has named the University of Washington Division of Dermatology as the leading and most frequently cited institutions for Merkel Cell Carcinoma articles having published 36 percent of the to...

We have long suspected that sunlight-damaged skin cells can develop into either a squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) or much less often a Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC). This process does not involve the Merkel cell polyomavirus, and is relevant for about 20% of MCC cases in the US. We have long believed th...

This year we will held our second online Merkel CELLebration in lieu of our annual Merkel Dinner. The event took place on Zoom on Monday, September 13, 2021. The event included a presentation of new research and clinical developments in MCC, as well as clinical trial updates. Meeting attendees inclu...

Merkel cell carcinoma, fortunately, rarely spreads to the brain, unlike several other types of cancer including melanoma. This study from Dr. David Miller’s team at Massachusetts General Hospital shows that unless there is some specific reason to suspect it (bad headaches, alteration in ability to...

The work done by the Seattle MCC Team is being featured at significant European meetings and is briefly summarized in this newsletter of the European Academy of Dermato-Oncology (EADO) a top organization focused in skin cancer in Europe.

Patients who experience a recurrence of their Merkel cell carcinoma are often treated aggressively. We report a case of a man with an unusually long course of MCC over 15 years who had his MCC recur around his face or neck 7 times before eventually developing distant spread. Because he had 4 major ...

There is an urgent need to find ways to help patients who do not have a persistent response to immune ‘checkpoint’ therapy for MCC. This review details surprising new findings from multiple labs that suggest such patients might benefit from blocking the ‘sensor’ a cancer cell uses to verify ...

This study provides evidence of frequent and durable responses to avelumab (anti-PD-L1) when patients receive such immune stimulation before starting traditional chemotherapy.

This year's 15th annual MMIG meeting was the first MMIG meeting to take place over Zoom and had a record setting number of attendees (104)!