1 Sept 2026
Great Strides in Cancer Treatment
The idea of using cells from your own tumor to develop a personalized vaccine that guides your immune system to fight your cancer goes back several decades. Today, we are on the verge of using messenger RNA to bring this concept to a new level, one that could change how we treat melanoma and other cancers. Dr. Margaret Callahan, chief of UConn Health’s Division of Hematology and Oncology and medical director of the clinical trials office, explains how immunotherapy works and why it holds so much promise.
Submit questions for Healthy Rounds:healthyrounds@uchc.edu
Dr. Margaret Callahan:https://www.uconnhealth.org/providers/profiles/Callahan-Margaret
UConn Health Division of Hematology/Oncology:https://health.uconn.edu/medicine/divisions/hematology-oncology/
UConn Health Orthopedics and Sports Medicine:https://www.uconnhealth.org/orthopedics-sports-medicine
Transcript
Dr. Alessi: Welcome to the Healthy Rounds Podcast, where we provide you with up-to-date and timely medical information provided by national and international leaders in their fields. This podcast is brought to you by UConn Health, with support from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and a grant from Coverys. I’m your host, Dr. Anthony Alessi, and it’s important for me to mention that this podcast is not an indication of what you should be doing in regard to your personal health. It is only there for information, and any personal health decisions should be provided between you and your personal physician.
I’m very happy to have as my guest today, Dr. Margaret Callahan. Dr. Callahan is a professor of immunology and medicine here at UConn Health. In addition, she’s chief of the division of hematology and oncology. Maggie, welcome to the show.
Dr. Callahan: Thanks so much for having me, Tony. Delighted to be here.
Dr. Alessi: One of the things that prompted us to do this show today has been a lot of new information for the treatment of melanoma. But before we get into that, let’s backtrack a little bit, and if you could, tell our listeners a little bit more about skin cancer and melanoma. When I think of those topics, I think, when I was young, we didn’t have SPF, right? People used to go to the beach to get tanned. Some still do. I remember people using baby oil and iodine combinations, right? And now, I mean, we have so many levels of SPF, and we are more alert to the fact of skin cancer. When did that shift change?
Dr. Callahan: Well, I’d say in the past couple decades, and if we bring it to today, where I slather my kids up with, I think it’s SPF 70 now, multiple hours at the pool, some of that just comes from knowledge of the biology of skin cancers.
Skin cancer is the most common cancer we see in humans, and there are two big families. There are keratinocyte skin cancers, which are basal and squamous skin cancers, and these are usually very treatable, but they are related to sun exposure, so you can save yourself some trouble by avoiding or safely interacting with the sun.
The more dangerous cancer that we’re talking about today, melanoma, starts with the pigment-producing cells in the skin. Those same skin cells that give you a great tan, they produce that pigment, and the tan we’re looking for can also go awry and become melanoma. And the reason we get scared about melanoma is because if it’s not caught early, it can spread to other organs and become a bigger problem.
Dr. Alessi: Maggie, are we becoming more aware of it also? Has it become more dangerous? Now, I’m talking about in the last 40 or, 40 or 50 years. Has the sun become a more potent enemy?
Dr. Callahan: Oh boy, this is a little outside of my area of expertise as a medical oncologist, but I do think the evidence out there is that changes in the environment and environmental exposures are exposing us to a little bit more UV, and maybe also changes in patterns of behavior.
But I do think part of the reason that we are seeing more melanoma comes from a couple of good problems we have. Firs
