PITTSBURGH -- The Centers for Disease Control reported that skin cancer cases are increasing and that has researchers looking for new ways to treat them.

More than a million cases of basal cell or squamous cell cancers will be diagnosed this year alone, according to the reports.

Usually they are cut, frozen or lasered off, but all of those are treatments that leave scars.

Researchers are now looking for a better way, said Channel 4 Action News medical editor, Marilyn Brooks.

Malcolm Cutty said he learned the hard way when he found out the spots on his head are precancerous.

“The ones I see are right up in here (and they are) a bunch of little tiny red dots,” patient Malcolm Cutty said. “And there's a lot of them up there.”

Cutty volunteered to have a medicine called levulan painted on his lesions, Brooks said.

It makes the lesions highly sensitive to a blue light, which activates the drug.

“We want to destroy as many of those precancers as possible, because 10 percent of them, left untreated, will and can eventually change and evolve into a skin cancer,” technician Fran Moore said.

This painless procedure is photodynamic therapy, Brooks said.

Researchers hoping to improve the technology are analyzing how artificial skin responds to different doses of luvulan, hormones, vitamins and light.

They believe a modified photodynamic therapy can work on basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas.

“They are a little bit deeper in the skin,” Dr. Philip Bailin of the Cleveland Clinic, said. “The ones that are actually more dangerous to the patient, or potentially more dangerous, that we can have those as effectively treated with this light-drug combination.”

This would be a treatment that would not involve surgery or leave a scar, if successful, Brooks said.

Malcolm said he wants to make sure his sun damage does not worsen.

He also said he wants his family to know that baking and frying should only happen in the kitchen.

Researchers said this type of therapy is in its early stages, but is promising.

Since the sun is considered a primary reason for skin cancer, experts are urging everyone to always wear sunscreen even on cloudy or cold days.

They recommended applying the equivalent of a shotglass full of sunscreen before you go outside.