In this month's issue of Plastic and Reconstructive surgery, doctors report of using skin flaps to deliver anti-cancer proteins on rat tumors, resulting in a 79 percent reduction in tumor volume.

"This new technique may allow us to reprogram skin flaps, using gene therapy, to provide a blueprint for anti-tumor agents like Interleukin-12 to be produced in the tumor to kill cancer, while avoiding adverse side effects," said Geoffrey Gurtner, MD, ASPS Member and study senior author. "In this study we took skin flaps in animal models and delivered IL-12 directly to the tumor area with tremendous success. Since skin flaps are used thousands of times each year in cancer patients, this may potentially open up an entirely new area in plastic surgery and bring the specialty, once again, to the center of medicine."

In addition, this technique seems to have the advantage in that serious side effects previously documented with systemic use of IL-12 were not found in the rats applied with skin flaps.

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