PGA Tour Golfer Justin Thomas Urges People to Check for Melanoma, ‘One Life to Live’ and ‘As the World Turns’ Actress Marnie Schulenburg Dies from Cancer and More

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From PGA Tour golfer Justin Thomas’ new sun-protection line to soap opera actress Marnie Schulenburg’s breast cancer death and the first child to receive CAR-T cell therapy celebrating 10 years cancer-free, here’s what’s happening in the cancer space this week.

‘One Life to Live’ and ‘As the World Turns’ actress Marnie Schulenburg dies from breast cancer.

Marnie Schulenburg, an actress known for her roles on “As the World Turns” and “One Life to Live,” died on Tuesday from breast cancer complications, according to her husband, actor Zack Robidas, who shared the news on Facebook.

“Please don’t say Marnie lost her battle to cancer. It’s simply not true. I watched her kick cancer’s ass every day since diagnosis,” Robidas wrote of his wife, who was 37 years old. “She is incredible. We chose to attack her diagnosis with blind optimism. We only talked about the future and continued moving forward. I don’t know if this was right but it’s all we knew how to do.”

PGA Tour golfer Justin Thomas urges people to get checked for melanoma and launches sun-protection brand.

Fourteen-time PGA Tour winner Justin Thomas is participating at the 104th PGA Championship in Tulsa, Oklahoma this week, but not without WearSPF, his own line of sun protection. The Kentucky native recently launched the sunscreen brand after having a mole removed in 2019 that ended up being early-stage melanoma, a form of skin cancer.

On the brand’s website, he wrote, “Knowing how close I was to a life-threatening situation was a real wake-up call for me. That’s why I decided to launch WearSPF, make a message on a bottle to wear sunscreen and encourage everyone to GO GET CHECKED. Do it for yourself and the ones you love. You’ve got nothing to lose, and possibly everything to gain. It’s time to raise your sun protection game.”

First pediatric patient to receive CAR-T cell therapy celebrates a decade of being cancer free.

After receiving an acute lymphoblastic leukemia diagnosis at the age of 5, Emily Whitehead underwent two years of chemotherapy. When that did not work, the young girl became the first child to receive CAR-T cell therapy in a clinical trial at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Now, Whitehead is 17 years old and hit the 10-year cancer-free mark. In a recent interview with “Today,” she said that she’s feeling great, is healthy and recently met another lifelong milestone: receiving her driver’s license.

“(CAR-T cell therapy) is a game changer for blood cancer,” Whitehead’s doctor, Dr. Stephan A. Grupp, section chief of the Cellular Therapy and Transplant Section, director of the Cancer Immunotherapy Program and medical director of the Cell and Gene Therapy Laboratory, at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said on “Today.”

A medical student’s class demonstration led to her cancer diagnosis.

Gabrielle Barboza, a third-year medical student in Brazil, was volunteering in a class demonstration where the professor (a doctor) was explaining how to check for neck tumors. In a startling turn, he found one and urged Barboza to have it checked out.

The 22-year-old ended up receiving a diagnosis of metastatic papillary thyroid carcinoma.

"I always wanted to be a doctor to take care of others and heal people, regardless of specialty," Barboza told Newsflash. "But after what I went through as a patient, I think my perspective has changed."

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