Mascia Adverse Effects of Anti-EGFR Therapy Genetic Ablation of Epidermal EGFR Reveals the Dynamic Origin of

help guide further investigation in this area. the search for ways to prevent this disruptive side effect. The current studies provide mechanistic insights that should Additional work will be necessary to further expand our understanding of EGFR inhibitor toxicity and to continue skin macrophages may contribute to the adverse effects of EGFR inhibitors. studies suggest that EGFR signaling is important for normal skin barrier function and antimicrobial defense and that and immune cell types to determine which ones are necessary for the rash phenotype. The findings of these two investigated the effects of crossing mice that lack EGFR in the skin with mice deficient in different immune pathways patients and study animals and examined the effects of EGFR inhibition on skin defenses and bacteria. They also patients treated with EGFR inhibitors. They characterized the changes in chemokine expression in the skin of treated Both sets of authors used mouse models that lack EGFR only in the skin to replicate the pattern of injury seen in this phenomenon. to mechanism of rash formation induced by EGFR inhibitors and uncover some of the skin components that contribute . help clarify the et al . and Lichtenberger et al prematurely stop their treatments. Now, two papers by Mascia inhibitors are particularly known for causing a severe rash and skin damage, which sometimes forces patients to correlates with its side effects, as is the case for inhibitors of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). EGFR body. This can be difficult to achieve for cancer drugs, however, especially when the effectiveness of a drug directly The goal of all medical interventions is to treat disease while minimizing the damage to healthy tissues in the Skin-Deep Search for the Effects of EGFR Inhibitors