What I’m Working On: A “Sweet” Cure for Skin Cancer

By Erin M. Burns, PhD, MSPH

“We are going to have to do something to cover up those tan lines!”

“Your back is so tanned, you look like a native islander!”

“Erin, you are going to get skin cancer!”

I am blonde and wear a fair-skinned coat in winter. But these are just a couple of exclamations I heard through my high school and college years as a bronzed, sun-worshiping lifeguard at our neighborhood pool. As Spring Break approaches on college campuses, and students I know head South with bikinis and beach towels, I think about the chances they are taking. And I worry.

Luckily, I am not one of the nearly 3 million Americans diagnosed with non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) annually with an update. But as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), I am researching preventive treatments for this type of skin cancer to help decrease the statistics and help change the way we think about health, beauty and yes, I know this is ambitious, Spring Break.

NMSC is the most common cancer and nearly completely preventable with the regular use of sunscreen. However, many people believe that they look better and healthier with a tan and continue to sunbathe or use tanning beds. Billions of dollars are spent treating NMSC each year. Although surgery successfully treats most NMSC, the surgeries can be disfiguring and nearly 9,000 people die annually. Needlessly.

Here is where my research comes in. We are working on treatments to prevent the development of skin cancer in the first place, even if people have been tanning for years, like I did in my youth. Our laboratory at UAB has been investigating a specific type of honey, and we found that by drinking water with this honey, tumor development is significantly decreased in our animal model (manuscript in progress).

This treatment has not been tested sufficiently in humans yet, but this sweet treatment could help reduce skin cancer incidence. In the future, as you are getting ready for a week at the beach for vacation, or Spring Break, you may be packing a beach umbrella , sunless tanning lotion, and a jar of honey.

In fact, now that I think about it, Winnie the Pooh was right: “The only reason for being a bee is to make honey. And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it.”

Have a Sweet Spring Break!

What I'm Working on: LA Anxiety? Welcome to the Jungle

By Dr. Alex Van Ness

The running of the bulls in Pamplona? Indiana Jones fleeing the boulder?!? Yeah, they’ve got nothing on me.

I’m talking about the recent International Stroke Conference (ISC) in Los Angeles, California. I have to admit that learning of this location provoked something akin to PTSD in me. The last time I was in Los Angeles for an ISC meeting, I was traumatized.

Imagine, if you will, a budding physician-scientist walking back from the conference center on a sunny California afternoon, mulling over the latest clinical trials, pulling a stuffed laptop case. Suddenly, a red double-decker bus comes out of nowhere, blasting some sort of horrible sound that passes for music. I turned and looked, unable to ignore the music any more than I could an ice pick in my brain. The bus was large and filled with ponytail sporting Tweens, all of whom appeared to be screaming or singing along to a throbbing and undecipherable jingle.

Streetwise, I tucked my head and tried to ignore them, while continuing down the sidewalk to my hotel. The next thing I knew, something, a projectile of sorts, hit me in the right shoulder. When I looked around, the only possible culprit was the double-decker bus. On the ground, lay a red bundle. Instinctively, I picked it up, stuffed it in my bag, and kept walking. I didn’t even make it another block before I sustained another direct hit—this time by a white tube-like structure. Again, I saw no one around me except the ponytailed troop on that double-decker bus. Realizing that the second piece of ammo was a T-shirt, I deduced that the singing ponytails were sniping me using T-shirt guns.

That was it.  A woman has her limits.  I accelerated and veered left, shaking them off the trail to my hotel. Just when I thought I had escaped, I was surrounded by high-pitched screams. Looking over my shoulder, I confronted a herd of girls running right at me (not unlike that terrible scene from “The Lion King.”)  I quickly realized I was trapped between the charging pigtails and a performance stage. I did what any sane academic would do… I grabbed the handle of my laptop pull case and ran for my life!

I didn’t stop until I reached the hotel lobby, a sweating, panting heap. I must have looked shaken, because the bartender inquired about my well-being. Astutely, he offered me a drink, and I ordered a Tanqueray and tonic with two limes.While I was still gathering my bearings at bar, one of my colleagues approached me and asked what was wrong. I described the traumatic event. After comforting me with a series of snorts and laughs, she inquired about the projectiles that struck me.

I took them out of my bag, holding them at arm’s length for her to see. Chuckling, she asked if I knew who Justin Bieber was. Who??? He is a pop icon starring at a concert nearby, she explained, happily securing the T-shirts in her backpack for her daughters. I said I hoped that her daughters would appreciate the genuine artifacts, given that I had risked my life acquiring them. She was pretty sure that they would since “he’s to die for.”