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Common drug effective in treating basal cell carcinoma skin cancer

Jean Y. Tang, MD, PhD (Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator ‘11-‘14) of Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, and colleagues, reported that a common inexpensive anti-fungal drug, called itraconazole, may be useful in treating basal cell carcinoma (the most common form of skin cancer). The drug was tested in a Phase II clinical trial with 29 patients who had a total of 101 tumors. Within a month, the size and spread of tumors had decreased in most patients. The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.