Introduction: Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the second most common form of skin cancer in the United States. The efficacy of a pharmaceutically elegant radiotherapeutic bandage, previously described by us for application against SCC of the skin, was tested for the first time in vivo using a subcutaneous SCC mouse model and a therapeutically relevant radiation dose.
Methods: Female athymic nude mice were injected with human Colo-16 SCC cells subcutaneously and after eight days (average tumor volume: 35±8.6mm(3)) received no treatment, or were exposed to non-radioactive or radioactive (92.5±18.5MBq) bandages for approximately 1h (n=10 per group). After treatment, tumors were measured over fifteen days, tumor volume ratios (TVRs) compared and histopathology performed.
Results: Fifteen days after treatment, the TVR of the radioactive bandage treatment group was 3.3±4.5, while TVRs of the non-radioactive bandage treatment and no treatment control groups were 33.2±14.7 and 26.9±12.6, respectively. At the time of necropsy, there was mild focal epidermal hyperplasia surrounding a small area of epidermal ulceration in the radioactive bandage group. No other examined tissue (i.e., muscle, liver, kidney, lung, spleen and heart) showed significant lesions.
Conclusions: Our radiotherapeutic bandage exhibits promising efficacy against SCC of the skin in a mouse model. It can be individually tailored for easy application on tumor lesions of all shapes and sizes, and could complement or possibly replace surgery in the clinic.
Keywords: Bandages; Carcinoma; Nanostructures; Radiotherapy; Skin neoplasms; Squamous cell.
Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.