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Everything in development, the medicines held by this cancer's subtypes, the open problems and what is being done about them, the roadmaps, and what changed on this record.
What is in development for Skin cancer (all types), drawn from the whole corpus: 40 items. Drugs are grouped by the most advanced trial phase they have reached anywhere; approved treatments sit under standard of care. Technologies are the methods being tested for this cancer, trials are the studies recorded here, and ideas are proposals not yet in a trial.
69 medicines on record are linked to one of the types below rather than to Skin cancer (all types) itself. Grouped by the type that holds them; each list opens that type's own page.
Melanoma incidence continues to rise in fair-skinned populations.
The commonest cancer in the world is the one nobody can count. UK registries long recorded only the first basal cell carcinoma and the first squamous cell carcinoma in a person's lifetime; counting one of each per person per year instead finds 67 percent more basal cell carcinomas and 42 percent more squamous cell carcinomas, and still misses about 14 basal cell carcinomas per 100 patients. The Office for National Statistics leaves the whole group out of the national cancer total on the stated ground that it is greatly under-registered. Services are planned on the number that is published.
Incidence and mortality are moving in opposite directions to the reassurance. Basal cell carcinoma rates in England stabilised after 2015, but squamous cell carcinoma rates went on rising, and non-melanoma skin cancer mortality rose about 4 percent a year from 2013, twice as fast in men. A group of cancers officially too trivial for the national total is killing more people each year.
The pathology report cannot see half of what decides the risk. The UK datasets list the pathological high-risk features and then say in terms that a low-risk tumour on histology may be upgraded once the clinician adds site, recurrence, immunosuppression and growth rate, and that risk stratification is better done by a clinician or a multidisciplinary team than recorded in the report. The joint audit found risk status was one of the most frequently omitted items in skin cancer reports.
Nothing recorded yet.
Also on OnCo: Treatment journeys · Survivorship planner.
Squamous cell carcinoma has two staging systems that disagree about who is high risk, and the disagreement is unresolved in guidelines. The anatomical systems put almost everyone in one or two categories; the alternative built to fix that has been validated only in single-centre cohorts, and the Royal College of Pathologists has published its objection to the risk bands derived from it. Meanwhile the decision those systems exist to inform, who needs nodal staging or adjuvant treatment, is being made anyway.
Skin cancer statistics are almost entirely about white skin, and the gap is visible in the data. Incidence rates in England are 26 to 27 times higher for basal cell carcinoma and 13 to 14 times higher for squamous cell carcinoma in the White ethnic group than in the Asian or Black groups, ethnicity is unknown for 19.2 percent of registered basal cell carcinomas, and acral melanoma, which is commonest in the Black ethnic group, is less likely to be referred on the urgent suspected cancer pathway and more likely to present late (Ahmed 2026).
The commonest cancer operation on earth rests on two observational margin studies from 1987 and 1992 and one randomised trial of Mohs surgery from the Netherlands. Nothing of that size has been attempted since, and the reason is that a cancer nobody dies of attracts no trial funding.
Five years is the wrong follow-up for basal cell carcinoma and the whole literature uses it. In the only long trial, 56 per cent of the recurrences after primary tumour treatment happened after year five, which means every five-year cure rate quoted for a cream, for light or for curettage is an overestimate of unknown size.
Nothing recorded yet.
Also on OnCo: Treatment journeys · Survivorship planner.
Curettage and cautery treats a large share of the world's basal cell carcinomas and has never been randomised against anything. Its evidence is a Danish registry of 47,358 tumours, which cannot separate the treatment from the choice of tumour.
Appearance is the outcome patients choose on and it is measured worse than recurrence is. Photographic and observer scales differ between trials, patient and doctor ratings disagree by 20 to 40 percentage points in the same cohort, and no trial has asked what trade in cure rate a person would actually accept.
Nothing recorded yet.
Also on OnCo: Treatment journeys · Survivorship planner.
Dated changes read from the records linked to this cancer: approvals, regulatory steps, reported trials, guideline versions and milestones. Newest first; no date is inferred.
On EdgeAll 43 changes by month →When this page itself was last checked or edited.
Start with the reassurance, because it is true: the British Association of Dermatologists says basal cell carcinomas can almost always be cured and very rarely spread, and that most squamous cell carcinomas are low-risk skin cancers and can be cured. What frightens people is not the cancer, it is the operation, and almost nothing is written about it. There are four ways a wound on the face is closed and it is worth knowing which is yours before the day. Stitches, if the edges will meet. A skin graft, a thin sheet taken from a donor site (Cancer Research UK says usually somewhere not too obvious such as the inner thigh) and laid over the defect, which means a second wound where it came from; a shaved donor site heals by itself, a cut one is stitched. A skin flap, skin from immediately beside the wound moved across while still attached to its own blood supply, which is why the colour and texture usually match better; only specially trained dermatologists or plastic surgeons do them and more than one operation is sometimes needed. And fourth, the one people are least often warned about, leaving the wound open under a dressing to heal on its own over several weeks and up to two months, which is a recognised choice and not a failure. Near the eyelid, the nose, the ear and the lip the reconstruction is often handed to a different team, and the BAD names maxillofacial, oculoplastic and plastic surgeons as the ones who may repair a Mohs wound, so who removes the cancer and who closes the wound are two separate questions. Afterwards: Cancer Research UK says the scar is quite noticeable and red to start with and gets paler over time, that some are thick and raised, and that numbness, tingling and pain in the area are nerve injury and may improve with time. The NHS says most scars fade but that this can take up to two years or more, and that massage with a water-based cream, keeping the scar covered in the sun for at least a year and SPF 30 or more all help. One small thing nobody mentions: after a local anaesthetic to the middle or lower face you cannot feel anything until it wears off, so avoid hot food and drink because of the risk of burns.
Disease-free survival at 24 months 87.
Post hoc analyses in 17 participants suggested that patidegib topical gel reduced the number of new surgically eligible basal cell carcinomas and the level of hedgehog signalling, with minimal adverse effects; no pre-specified endpoint was met.
Objective response in 54.
Freedom from treatment failure at five years 77.