Discussing Unmet Needs for Skin Cancer with Laura K. Ferris, MD, PhD, and Neal Bhatia, MD

During the Fall Clinical Dermatology Conference in Las Vegas, Neal Bhatia, MD, and Laura Korb Ferris, MD, PhD, highlighted a number of notable topics in their interview with HCPLive which had been covered in their talk titled ‘Beyond the Biopsy: Other Methods To Help Us Manage Skin Cancer’ Neal Bhatia, MD, and Laura Korb Ferris, MD, PhD.

Ferris serves as professor of the University of Pittsburgh Clinical and Translational Science Institute and director of the UPMC department of dermatology clinical trials unit. Bhatia is known for his work as director of clinical dermatology at Therapeutics Clinical Research and as the chief medical editor of Practical Dermatology.

“I think there's so many unmet needs,” Ferris said. “Prevention is something that's important. We all know about sunscreen, but it’s really about understanding whether there are other things that we would call ‘chemo-prevention’? Are there topical therapies? One of the things we discuss is the conflicting data around things like nicotinamide, which we're maybe excited about early. Secondly, are there more advanced, more effective, topical therapies? Then, of course, how do we combine things like systemic therapy with other modalities?”

Bhatia added to Ferris’ comments, noting his views on where unmet needs and potential lies in the skin cancer management space.

“I think chemo-prevention is probably the biggest therapeutic unmet need,” Bhatia explained. “We don't have access to acitretin anymore. The tolerability of some, like Laura mentioned about nicotinamide and some of these other extracts, they're very important. But honestly, not to soapbox, but I think the biggest unmet need is courage. Dermatologists need a little more courage to put their foot on the gas and treat these patients with hedgehog inhibitors. And, you know, get some of these larger tumors, as well as think about multiple tumors.”

Bhatia noted that he believes dermatologists need to get past surgical fatigue, adding that the maintenance needed to keep things away should be addressed.

“I would say one of the things that I hope people will understand is just the incredible amount of research that goes into figuring out how to use drugs that are being used across multiple cancers and apply them to the treatment of our patients in dermatology,” Ferris said. “And to understand the pipeline and how we're going to potentially use things in a different way. Neoadjuvant therapy, for example. So not just using these drugs to salvage but even using these drugs prior to surgery and think about how that might impact the course of disease for our patients.”

To find out more, view Ferris and Bhatia’s full interview posted above. For more from Fall Clinical view our latest coverage here.

In this summary, the quotes implemented were edited for the purposes of clarity.