Enhanced Disease-Specific Survival Among Individuals With Malignant Adnexal Tumors of the Skin Treated With Mohs Surgery: A National Database Study.

BACKGROUND: Malignant adnexal tumors of the skin are a rare group of tumors that can be locally aggressive and require surgical excision with strict margin control to achieve clearance. Given the rarity of these tumors, there is a limited understanding within the medical community regarding optimal treatment approaches. OBJECTIVE: To examine surgical management trends and outcomes for patients diagnosed with cutaneous adnexal tumors from 2000 to 2020. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database was queried to identify biopsy-proven cases of cutaneous adnexal tumors between 2000 and 2020. Clinical and disease characteristics were examined, and disease-specific survivals were compared between surgical approaches using Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox proportional hazards models. RESULTS: Mohs surgery demonstrated a significant increase in utilization from 2000 to 2020 (+447.1%) and improvements in disease-specific survival (mean 231.7 months; p < .001) compared with no surgery; wide local excision exhibited no improved disease-specific survival (227.7 months; p = .070). Multivariable Cox regression further highlighted that only Mohs surgery exhibited a reduced disease-specific mortality risk compared with no surgery (adjusted HR 0.49; p = .011). CONCLUSION: Given the enhanced disease-specific survival coupled with tissue preservation strategies, Mohs surgery emerges as a promising surgical approach for the treatment of malignant adnexal tumors of the skin.

Refining Field Cancerization: An Institutional Cohort Analysis of Patient Characteristics in a Validation Cohort.

BACKGROUND: Field cancerization is poorly defined in dermatology. The author group previously proposed and applied a classification system in an original cohort to risk-stratify patients with field cancerization. OBJECTIVE: Apply the authors' classification system within a validation cohort. METHODS: Patients with keratinocyte carcinoma history completed a survey regarding demographic information, medical history, and chemoprevention use. Patients were assigned a field cancerization class, and differences between validation and original cohorts were assessed. RESULTS: A total of 363 patients were enrolled (mean age 67.4; 61.7% male). After comparing validation and original cohorts, there were differences in age between class II (p = .02) and class IVb (p = .047), and differences in chemoprevention use in class III (p = .04). Similar to the original cohort, the validation cohort was associated with increases in total number of skin cancers in the last year (p < .001), 5 years (p < .001), lifetime (p < .001), years since first skin cancer (p < .001), and chemoprevention use (p < .001). In the validation cohort, there were increases in age (p = .03) and immunocompromised status (p = .04) with increasing class, which were not observed in the original cohort. CONCLUSION: Differences among field cancerization classes were similar in a validation cohort, further highlighting the importance of class-specific treatment and management.

Stability Characterization of the Novel Anti-Cancer HM-10/10 HDL-Mimetic Peptide.

Epithelial adenocarcinoma of the ovary and colon are associated with the highest rates of cancer-related deaths in women in the U.S. The literature supports the role of HDL-associated apolipoproteins in the treatment of cancer and other pro-inflammatory diseases. Previously, we developed a novel 20-amino acid mimetic peptide, HM-10/10, which potently inhibits tumor development and growth in colon and ovarian cancer. Here, we report the properties of HM-10/10 relative to its stability in vitro. The results demonstrated that HM-10/10 had the highest half-life in human plasma compared to plasma from other species tested. HM-10/10 demonstrated stability in human plasma and simulated gastric environment, increasing its promise as an oral pharmaceutical. However, under conditions modeling the small intestine, HM-10/10 demonstrated significant degradation, likely due to the peptidases encountered therein. Furthermore, HM-10/10 demonstrated no evidence of time-dependent drug-drug interactions, although it demonstrated CYP450 induction slightly above cutoff. As proteolytic degradation is a common limitation of peptide-based therapeutics, we are pursuing strategies to improve the stability properties of HM-10/10 by extending its bioavailability while retaining its low toxicity profile. HM-10/10 holds promise as a new agent to address the international women's health crisis of epithelial carcinomas of the ovary and colon.

Free Banach lattices under convexity conditions.

We prove the existence of free objects in certain subcategories of Banach lattices, including p-convex Banach lattices, Banach lattices with upper p-estimates, and AM-spaces. From this we immediately deduce that projectively universal objects exist in each of these subcategories, extending results of Leung, Li, Oikhberg and Tursi (Israel J. Math. 2019). In the p-convex and AM-space cases, we are able to explicitly identify the norms of the free Banach lattices, and we conclude by investigating the structure of these norms in connection with nonlinear p-summing maps.