CALLS FOR MORE RESEARCH: Could HPV Vaccine Treat Skin Cancer? Case report shows complete disease regression following injections.

A novel treatment for squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) using HPV vaccine could some day prove useful in patients who are poor surgical candidates, have multiple lesions, or who defer surgery, researchers reported.

A single case report of an elderly woman with multiple, inoperable cutaneous basaloid SCC, showed that systemic and direct intratumoral injection of 9-valent HPV vaccine resulted in complete regression of all cutaneous malignant tumors, according to Anna J. Nichols, MD, PhD, of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Miami, and colleagues.

All tumors resolved 11 months after the first injection of vaccine, they reported in JAMA Dermatology.

No systemic adverse effects were reported, they added, and at the patient’s last follow-up visit 24 months after the first intratumoral dose of the HPV vaccine, there was no clinical evidence of SCC recurrence.

I hope it turns out to be as good as this sounds.