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'I Went For A Salon Treatment But Walked Out With A Cancer Diagnosis'
Beauty queen Margaret Gardiner has bravely shared her battle with cancer, revealing that an ordinary trip to the salon led to one diagnosis. The 65-year-old, who won Miss Universe in 1978, said her ordeal started when she had a facial that uncovered some concerning red flags.
"A couple of years ago, maybe three or four, I went for a facial, which I usually don't go for, and they opened something, and it never healed. When I'd shower, it would start to bleed.
"...I was really, really lucky because even afterwards, you know, it just didn't heal. And so, I went back to [the salon] and I said, 'Can you zap this?' And she's like, 'Maybe you should go and speak to a skin specialist?' Usually, when it doesn't heal, that's a sign."
After seeking further medical advice, Margaret discovered that her unusual, open sore was indeed cancer. Generally, this is referred to as an ulcerating wound, taking place when a cancerous tumour reaches the skin's surface and breaks through.
While these are notoriously difficult and sometimes impossible to remove, Margaret underwent a biopsy to do just this, leaving a hole around half a centimetre wide on her face. As a cover girl with a glamorous career, this flipped Margaret's world upside down, but she was grateful that medics found the cancer promptly.
"Luckily, the hole was only about half a centimetre big," Margaret said. "But actually, for a hole when you look in your face, that is quite big.
"They got a plastic surgeon to take my skin and pull it across, and so my nose is skew like that...They had [initially] told me that they were going to take my forehead and flip it over to cover the hole in my face, and that they would have to regrow the skin.
"So I was going to be horribly, horribly scarred. I'm so grateful for my skew, but you know, so I don't look like I did, but I'm really grateful for looking the way I do."
Sadly, this isn't the only time Margaret has suffered from cancer. Around 24 years ago, medics also found a sarcoma in the centre of her chest.
This especially rare form of tumour was removed in what Margaret remembers being a 10-hour operation, with a skin graft then required to cover the hole that formed in her chest.
Margaret said these experiences have not only scarred her body but have taken a significant toll on her mental health. In the past, she has even tried to stay out of the public eye.
But now, she chooses to celebrate herself, continuing to star in photo shoots and appear on magazine covers. She's even written several books, including Damaged Beauty: Joey Superstar, published in February.
"I think that you know, for women ageing and even young people, we're always looking at ourselves and saying, 'Oh, we wish we looked different'," she continued.
"But I think that what we've really got to start doing is look in the mirror and say, 'You are awesome, just who you are,' and start celebrating you. When the outside gets destroyed, your inside shines through.
"That's what will get you through the years." She later added: "You know, also from the book side, one of the things that it's examining is image.
"Image projected on you, image we take on ourselves, and what's going on behind the image. And, I think women in particular are framed by society to compromise who we are and meet an aesthetic and a standard that can tie us in knots.
"You know you have to be a lady, but you also have to be sexy, smart and strong, but if you're too strong, you're a b****. People want to put you on a pedestal, but then they look for your faults. In the world of modelling and beauty, and it's more apparent how this damages you.
"But in every industry, women daily are having to navigate how to present themselves, so they are acceptable....We must have more and more of this conversation amongst women."
How Cancer Research Is Revolutionizing Treatment
In 2022, just five weeks after becoming the director of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Monica Bertagnolli had a mammogram—and found out she had cancer.
"I went through all my treatment, and I am fine," said Bertagnolli, the former director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), onstage at the TIME100 Summit in New York City on April 23. That's because "every single bit of the treatment I got was supported, funded, and happened because of the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute."
Bertagnolli was joined onstage at the Summit by two other leaders in the health industry: Dr. Anaeze C. Offodile II, chief strategy officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Tina Deignan, commercial president of Pfizer Oncology, which is a sponsor of the TIME100 Summit. Appearing on a panel moderated by Abby Phillip, anchor of CNN NewsNight, the three experts spoke about innovations in cancer treatment—and the importance of making sure as many people as possible have access to these medical advances.
Deignan, like Bertagnolli, shared a personal story about cancer: One of her colleagues experienced pain in her side and was later diagnosed with Stage III colon cancer. The colleague was in her late 30s—years before doctors typically recommend people get routine colonoscopies.
"She's an example of this emerging face of cancer that's really quite challenging and quite alarming," Deignan said. Researchers have found that more young people are getting cancer. But, Deignan also said: "We've made a lot of progress. We're racing against cancer."
Read More: What to Expect at a Colonoscopy
In many ways, cancer research has never been more promising, thanks to advances in technologies like AI. Personalized medicine is critical to innovations in cancer treatment, the experts agreed, which opens up a growing role for technology in treating patients, Offodile said. For instance, researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have been using AI to identify the unique mutations associated with patients' pancreatic cancer and then create mRNA vaccines targeted to that specific cancer.
"What we found is, for people who responded—so their body created a protein trigger after the vaccine—they had continuous survival three years out," Offodile said. "Think about what that means for taking this pancreatic cancer [vaccine] to all the tough-to-treat cancers."
While the experts spoke about the great strides researchers have made in understanding different cancers, there are growing challenges. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, mistrust in the health system and health institutions has proliferated. The best way to address this, Bertagnolli said, isn't through a public relations campaign or experts lecturing people about what they should do. Rather, experts must engage with community members and ask them what they need.
"We build trust human being to human being," Bertagnolli said. "One of the things I am particularly passionate about is our public funding and our public health system getting into every single community. Every community is different; every person is different."
The panelists all emphasized the importance of equity in the health industry—even as the Trump Administration targets diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. While Bertagnolli acknowledged the challenges facing the nation's health system right now, she insisted that the NIH and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services "is here for everybody."
"I'm not afraid of the word equity because that's what equity means," she said. "It means everybody."
Addressing health inequities is key to improving health on a broad scale. Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer later than their white counterparts, Deignan said, and 20% of rural Americans live more than 60 miles away from an oncologist, which can make it hard for them to access care.
"Bringing innovative medicines doesn't matter unless we can actually get the medicines into the hands of patients that need them most," Deignan said. "Our focus is trying to reach all patients, and we also know we can't do that on our own—but we work in partnership across the community to do so."
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The TIME100 Summit convenes leaders from the global TIME100 community to spotlight solutions and encourage action toward a better world. This year's summit features a variety of speakers across a diverse range of sectors, including business, health and science, AI, culture, and more.
Speakers for the 2025 TIME100 Summit include human rights advocate Yulia Navalnaya; Meghan, Duchess of Sussex; comedian Nikki Glaser; climate justice activist Catherine Colman Flowers; Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, and many more, plus a performance by Nicole Scherzinger.
The 2025 TIME100 Summit was presented by Booking.Com, Circle, Diriyah Company, Prudential Financial, Toyota, Amazon, Absolut, Pfizer, and XPRIZE.
Akeso Wins Chinese Approval For Cancer Drug Positioned To Rival Merck's Keytruda
April 25, 2025
West Coast Biotech & Life Sciences Reporter
Akeso, a Chinese biotech that made headlines for beating Merck's Keytruda in a head-to-head trial, won approval in China this week for the therapy, a company spokesperson confirmed to STAT. New data show early hints of the medicine improving patient survival — the gold standard outcome of any cancer study.
The drug, ivonescimab, was approved for previously untreated patients with non-small cell lung cancer who had detectable levels of PD-L1, a protein that tamps down immune responses. China's National Medical Products Administration greenlit the therapy based on results from a late-stage trial, HARMONi-2, which found Akeso's therapy reduced patients' risk of tumor progression by 49% compared with Keytruda.
In its submission to regulators, Akeso also included data on patient survival. In an email to STAT, the biotech disclosed that an interim analysis following 157 patient deaths found that participants on ivonescimab had a roughly 22% reduced risk of death, with a hazard ratio of 0.777.
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