Spotlight on Clinical Response

Cutaneous castleman's disease responds to anti–interleukin-6 treatment

^{1 1}Phase I Program, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center; ²University of Houston Health Center, University of Houston; ³Department of Dermatology, University of Texas-Houston Medical School; ⁴Department of Dermatology and ⁵Departments of Dermatology, Microbiology/Molecular Genetics, and Internal Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; ⁶Department of Dermatology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas; ⁷St. Joseph Dermpath, Bellaire, Texas; and ⁸Clinical Hematology and Oncology, Centocor R&D, Inc., Horsham, Pennsylvania

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rkurzroc{at}mdanderson.org.

	Abstract

Castleman's disease is uncommon, and cutaneous involvement is even rarer. We report a 42-year-old Asian woman with the multicentric plasma cell variant of Castleman's disease limited to her skin. The literature suggests that Castleman's disease is driven by interleukin-6 (IL-6). Based on these data, we hypothesized that suppression of IL-6 would have a salutary effect. Therefore, our patient was treated with CNTO328, a chimeric murine anti-human IL-6 antibody. She has shown a remarkable, ongoing response to this treatment, with almost complete clearing of her skin lesions after six doses. [Mol Cancer Ther 2007;6(9):OF1–5]

Key Words: cutaneous, Castleman‘s, anti–interleukin-6, CNT0328