Topical Immunotherapy and Skin Cancer Development
Posted: Thursday, May 16, 2019
The combination treatment calcipotriol plus fluorouracil (5-FU) cream has previously been effective against precancerous skin lesions, and results from a new study, published in JCI Inight, suggest that the topical treatment may also reduce the risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma. Shadmehr Demehri, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues found that fewer patients who received calcipotriol plus 5-FU treatment on the face and scalp developed squamous cell carcinoma over 3 years than patients treated with a control.
The authors evaluated 84 patients with actinic keratosis lesions from a double-blind clinical trial who received a 4-day treatment course. The treatment group was assigned to receive calcipotriol plus 5-FU (n = 39), and the control group received petroleum jelly plus 5-FU (n = 45) on the face and scalp.
Within 3 years, significantly fewer patients developed skin cancer on the face and scalp in the treatment group than the control group (7% vs. 28%, respectively; P = .03). The therapy did not reduce skin cancer development on the arms; however, the authors suggest prolonging the treatment regimen may be necessary to be effective on the arms and other parts of the body. Furthermore, tissue samples of 22 patients from the treatment group showed higher levels of T cells in normal skin compared with those in the control group (P = .002).
“Further studies are warranted to determine the optimal calcipotriol plus 5-FU treatment duration required to induce a chemopreventive effect at all anatomical sites at risk for [squamous cell carcinoma] development,” the authors concluded.
Disclosure: The study authors’ disclosure information may be found at insight.jci.org.
