Newswise — San Francisco, CA, February 28, 2012 – A new, trans-Atlantic partnership of leading hospitals and universities has been formed to help promote research in melanoma and the pain resulting from the treatment of melanoma.
Participants include the Rigshospitalet - Copenhagen University Hospital - the University of Aarhus, Aalborg University, California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute (CPMCRI) – part of the Sutter Health network - and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). A financial contribution from the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation is helping fund this strategic collaboration in research and education.
"It is essential that we continue to advance our understanding in this area,” says Professor Jørgen B. Dahl of the University of Copenhagen, who along with CPMCRI, and Innovation Center Denmark, Silicon Valley has initiated the partnership. “Therefore, I am glad that some of the strongest research institutions in both the San Francisco Bay Area and Denmark are joining us in this vital work.”
Malignant melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer and is responsible for 75 percent of deaths from skin cancer worldwide. Initial treatment typically involves surgery. While treatment can be effective, particularly when the cancer is diagnosed early, some patients experience severe skin sensitivity and pain due to the surgery. “Because of our focus on survival, pain has not always been a focus of this field,” says Stanley Leong, MD, Chief of Cutaneous Oncology at CPMC. “However, we often see our patients struggling with pain after treatment”.
This new partnership will explore betters ways of treating the disease and reducing the pain associated with those treatments.
“This partnership provides substantial benefits to Denmark,” says Nanna Finnerup, an Associate Professor at Aarhus University, who was the first to systematically examine the pain associated with melanoma. “We are seeing a growing number of patients each year suffering from melanoma. This collaboration teams us up with some of the leading researchers and physicians in the US and helps us bring their skill, experience and knowledge to our patients, and also to expand and intensify our own research programs.”
The partnership also includes a student exchange agreement between the University of Copenhagen and CPMCRI, one of the top 25 independent research institutes in the US. Under the agreement three Danish students will spend one year in San Francisco, working with CPMC researchers.
"We welcome the collaboration and look forward to receiving gifted students and researchers from Denmark,” says Karin Lottrup Petersen, a scientist at CPMCRI and an Associate Professor at UCSF."The students will benefit from being able to work with some of the best researchers in the world, and the researchers will benefit from being exposed to the passion and fresh ideas that the students bring to their work.”
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