News & Publications

The data and analysis to create a new staging system for Merkel cell carcinoma, now used worldwide, was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. This was based on survival data from over 5000 MCC patients and reinforced the importance of sentinel lymph node biopsy in prognosi...

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is an aggressive cutaneous malignancy with a high risk of lymph node involvement. To the authors’ knowledge, few data have been published to date regarding the optimal regional therapy for lymph node-positive patients. This cohort study was performed to analyze the ...

Dr. Priya Rao sets forth the guidelines for pathologists to describe the histologic features of MCC in their reports.

Drs. Iyer, Koba & Nghiem outline new MCC ICD-9 codes and Staging System in a celebratory centennial review in the official Spanish Dermatology journal, Actas Dermo-sifiliograficus.

Drs. Jayasri Iyer & Paul Nghiem publish an article MCC: An Uncommon But Often Lethal Cancer in the Skin Cancer Foundation Journal. This article describes MCC using easy to understand, non-technical language and includes information such as "Key Risk Factors", Merkel cell polyomavirus and general di...

Merkel cells are specialized cells in the skin that are important for proper neural encoding of light touch stimuli. Conflicting evidence suggests that these cells are lineally descended from either the skin or the neural crest. To address this question, we used epidermal (Krt14(Cre)) and neural cre...

Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCPyV) has been detected in approximately 75% of patients with the rare skin cancer Merkel cell carcinoma. We investigated the prevalence of antibodies against MCPyV in the general population and the association between these antibodies and Merkel cell carcinoma. Methods Mu...

Merkel cells (MCs) are located in the touch-sensitive area of the epidermis and mediate mechanotransduction in the skin. Whether MCs originate from embryonic epidermal or neural crest progenitors has been a matter of intense controversy since their discovery >130 yr ago. In addition, how MCs are mai...

A 69-year-old woman presented with a 2-year history of gradually increasing scalp swelling in December 2001. The patient was in good general condition, but physical examination revealed a 5-cm fleshy tumor on the right scalp, with pathology consistent with Merkel cell carcinoma on excisional biopsy....

Although Friedrich Merkel believed that the direct connection of these cells to nerves suggested they were ‘touch cells’, it took over 120 years for science to prove this. Studies in which normal Merkel cells were deleted in mice showed that those mice lost normal skin sensation.