PURPOSE Skin self-examination (SSE) is one method for identifying atypical nevi among members of the general public. Unfortunately, past research has shown that SSE has low sensitivity in detecting atypical nevi. The current study investigates whether crowdsourcing (collective effort) can improve SSE identification accuracy. Collective effort is potentially useful for improving people's visual ...

Monitoring of atypical nevi is an important step in early detection of melanoma, a clinical imperative in preventing the disease progression. Current standard diagnosis is based on biopsy and histopathological examination, a method that is invasive and highly dependent upon the physician’s experience. In this work, we employed a clinical multiphoton microscope to image in vivo and non-invasivel...

We have examined melanocytic cells derived directly from fresh biopsy tissue for the presence of p53 mutations. Using selective media that permits growth of melanocytes and inhibits growth of fibroblasts and keratinocytes, we established short-term, primary cultures of melanocytes from skin biopsies of common acquired nevi, dysplastic nevi, and from metastatic melanoma. Using PCR-single-strande...

BACKGROUND Dermoscopy is a technique which improves melanoma detection. Optical dermoscopy uses a handheld optical device to observe the skin lesions without recording the images. Sequential digital dermoscopy imaging (SDDI) allows storage of the pictures and their comparison over time. Few studies have compared optical dermoscopy and SDDI from an economic perspective. OBJECTIVE The present o...

BACKGROUND 5% Imiquimod cream is a topical immune response modifier that has been used off-label to treat malignant melanocytic proliferations such as lentigo maligna. To our knowledge, imiquimod has not been previously used to treat atypical nevi (AN). OBSERVATIONS Three patients each with 1 selected clinically AN were treated with imiquimod 5 nights per week for 12 weeks. The lesions were s...

Members of cutaneous melanoma (CM) families with dysplastic nevi (DN) are at high risk of developing CM. Using a shuttle vector plasmid, pSP189, cell lines from three patients with CM plus DN were previously found to have elevated post-UV plasmid mutability. To investigate familial occurrence of this cellular phenotype, we examined post-UV plasmid mutability in 31 lymphoblastoid cell lines from...

Pyrolytic graphite particles modified with hydrogenase and an NAD(+)/NADH cycling enzyme provide a modular heterogeneous catalyst system for regeneration of oxidised or reduced nicotinamide cofactors using H(2) and H(+) as electron source or sink. Particles can be tuned for cofactor supply under different conditions by appropriate choice of hydrogenase.

BACKGROUND Digital computer analysis of dermatoscopical images has been reported to facilitate the differential diagnosis of pigmented skin lesions in recent years. OBJECTIVE The aim of our study was to perform digital computer analysis of a set of different melanocytic lesions and compare the objective results. METHODS The set of 260 melanocytic lesions (150 excised difficult cases (46 mel...

BACKGROUND Dysplastic nevi are among the most important cutaneous melanoma simulators. They are important risk markers for this neoplasia and can be its potential precursors. Some authors found a statistically significant relationship between the degree of dysplasia and the risk for developing melanoma. However, reproducibility of grading criteria ranged from poor to fair in the researched arti...

BACKGROUND Incisional biopsy of clinically atypical nevi continues to be a common practice. Questions can arise as to the adequacy of these partial biopsies. OBJECTIVE To determine whether incisional (partial) biopsy specimens may be considered representative of the entire lesion, atypical nevi submitted to our dermatopathology laboratory were examined for the presence or absence of heterogen...