Interesting because these lesions are so common....
A combination of two FDA-approved drugs - a topical chemotherapy and an immune-system-activating compound - was able to rapidly clear actinic keratosis lesions from patients participating in a clinical trial. Standard treatment for this common skin condition, which can lead to the development of squamous cell carcinoma, takes up to a month and can elicit several unpleasant side effects. The report from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has been published online and will appear in the January issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
"The high tumor clearance rate, short treatment duration and favorable side-effect profile highlight the remarkable effectiveness of this approach, compared with currently available treatments," says Shadmehr Demehri, MD, PhD, of the MGH Center for Cancer Immunology and the Cutaneous Biology Research Center, senior author of the report. "But more importantly, the unprecedented ability of this combination therapy to directly activate the adaptive immune system against skin cancer precursors holds great promise to establish an immune memory within treated skin capable of preventing future cancer development."
Eight weeks after treatment, participants receiving the combined treatment had a significantly greater reduction in the number and size of actinic keratosis lesions - for example, an average of 88 percent reduction in facial lesions versus 26 percent reduction for those receiving the control preparation. Even participants with large "hypertrophic" lesions, which rarely respond to conventional topical treatments, saw significant reduction in the size of their lesion with combined treatment. Among participants receiving combined treatment who had previously been treated for actinic keratosis, 82 percent found the treatment to be more effective.
"As both medications used in our trial are already available clinically, they could readily be used by dermatologists to treat actinic keratosis, particular in patients for whom conventional treatments have failed," .