University Times

Retired United States Steel Corp. CEO and chairman Thomas Usher and his wife Sandra have donated $1 million to the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI)’s melanoma program.

The donation has established the Sandra and Thomas Usher Endowed Fund for Melanoma to promote clinical strategies to prevent, detect, diagnose and treat melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, which causes more than 80 percent of skin cancer-related fatalities. Thomas Usher, a melanoma survivor, was diagnosed with the disease in 1998.

John Kirkwood, professor of medicine at the School of Medicine and director of UPCI’s melanoma program, said: “This disease has previously had few available treatment options after surgery, and we have dedicated our program to developing more effective approaches to the disease.”

Funds from the Ushers will be used to bring the most advanced new molecular and immunological approaches to treatment into the clinic, including vaccines that may spur the body’s immune system into recognizing and destroying melanoma.