Allergy Used To Treat Cancerous Skin

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31304, 25 February 1967, Page 20

Allergy Used To Treat Cancerous Skin

Allergy, a disease process that plagues mil. lions, has been turned to medicine’s advantage in the treatment of skin cancer, a research worker in the United States reported recently, according to Jane Brody writing in the "New York Times.”

Dr. E. Klein, head of dermatology at Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Buffalo, said he had succeeded in making skin cancer cells allergic to certain drugs that then destroy the cancer tissue without harming normal skin, the report says. This new approach to cancer therapy was described to members of the New York State Medical Society at its annual meeting recently. Asked whether the new treatment was available in Christchurch, a specialist in skin diseases said it had not been tried here. With this sort of new development, he said, it had to be thoroughly proved before being generally adopted.

This would involve experimentation and follow-up over a long period. Chemotherapy was carried out for localised skin cancers, the specialist said, and in some cases surgery was used. However, there might well be virtue in the new approach for widespread cases, and he had read of it with interest According to the “New York Times” article. Dr. Klein’s new treatment has successfully rid patient* of

pre-cancerous as well as cancerous skin conditions. "There are 5 million persons in the United States today with pre-cancerous lesions amenable to this treatment” he said, persons with such pre-cancerous skin conditions as “solar keratosis” caused by over-exposure to the sun.

Dr. Klein, sometimes called the father of chemotherapy for skin cancer, stumbled upon the drug allergy treatment in his for new

chemicals that would destroy skin cancer cells.

The dermatologist said in an interview that more than 90 per cent of skin cancers were best treated by standard methods, such as X-ray treatment or surgery. These cancers, he said, were single nodules that involved only small areas of the body.