Video game icon and gaming legend Lara Croft has been chosen as spokesmodel for the Skin Cancer Awareness Sun Smart Teens Program. According to the skin cancer awareness foundation, the goal of the Sun Smart Teens Program will be to raise awareness of skin cancer risks and educate teens to the dangers of the sun. Because melanoma is being diagnosed in ever younger populations, the foundation has chosen a spokesmodel they feel teens can relate to -- Lara Croft personifies the benefits of having a healthy body. Beginning November 2006, Lara Croft's image will be used as part of a nationwide tour designed to educate and provide skin cancer awareness information for teens. For more information, visit the  Skin Cancer Awareness Sun Smart Teens Program.

Let's say you do not work in the scientific or medical fields but someone told you that you just might be the one to find a cure for cancer -- would you say -- no way! It's possible. From the comfort of your own home, while you are cooking, or sleeping, or taking a shower, a cure for cancer could be found because of you. If you have a computer, Internet access and a willingness to share your unused time online, a project called Rosetta@home, can use it for biomedical research.

Rosetta@home is working to determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that might ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human diseases, including cancer. According to Rosetta@home, by running the Rosetta program on your computer while you don't need it you will help them speed up and extend research in ways they cannot possibly attempt without you. In a process called distributed computing, the project takes a massive calculation, break it into chunks, and send the chunks across the Internet to be processed by tens of thousands of personal computers. Then all the bits and pieces are retrieved and the information reconstructed at a central computer. For more information on becoming a part of this innovative project, visit Rosetta@home.

Developed by Hopelab, Re-Mission is a challenging, 3D video game with 20 levels that takes the player on a journey through the bodies of young patients with different kinds of cancer. Players control a nanobot named Roxxi who destroys cancer cells, battles bacterial infections, and manages realistic, life- threatening side effects associated with the disease. HopeLab stated that the results from its scientific study involving 375 teen and young adults at 34 medical centers in the United States, Canada and Australia showed young people who played Re-Mission were more likely to stick to their medication regimens than those who did not play the game.

The genesis for the video game came from Pam Omidyar's imagination while working in a research laboratory during the day, watching cancer cells multiplying under a microscope, and then going home to play video games with her family and friends. She got the idea that a video game for young people with cancer might play a positive role in helping them fight their disease. What if a video game designed especially for kids with cancer gave them a feeling of power over their disease as they blast away at the cancer cells? She had access to researchers to test the game and see if it really would help the kids. In 2001, Omidyar, wife of eBay Inc. founder, launched HopeLab to make this idea a reality. Today, HopeLab is a nonprofit organization that helps young people deal with chronic illnesses.

HopeLab is distributing a PC version of the game to young people with cancer, free of charge, through its website and online community at Re-Mission. The game is available is in english, french and spanish versions. The Re-Mission website also provides an interactive, online community where teens and young adults with cancer can share information and support one another.