Laser-Induced Immunotherapy and Prevention Advances in Skin Cancer and Aging

Conclusions

• Lasers and energy-based devices appear to be useful not only for cosmetic skin rejuvenation but also for treating and potentially preventing skin cancer.
• Ablative fractional laser treatment can trigger a strong local innate and later adaptive immune response, making skin tumors more immunologically active.
• Combining fractional laser treatment with PD-1 immunotherapy seems to improve tumor clearance and survival compared with either approach alone in preclinical models.
• Early human studies suggest that adding ablative fractional laser to intratumoral PD-1 blockade can increase T-cell infiltration and produce meaningful basal cell carcinoma responses.
• Repeated laser treatments may reduce UV-induced skin carcinogenesis by delaying tumor formation and lowering the number of subsequent skin cancers.
• Both ablative and non-ablative fractional laser approaches appear to normalize photoaged and UV-damaged skin at the clinical, histologic, and molecular levels.
• Non-ablative fractional laser treatment seems to reduce UV-induced cellular senescence and lower P16 expression toward control levels.
• Gene expression analyses suggest that non-ablative fractional laser can partially restore UV-altered skin toward a more normal molecular profile.
• Observed benefits of laser-based photoprevention may involve removal of damaged keratinocytes, reduced fibroblast senescence, and immune modulation.
• AI-assisted imaging such as OCT-based diagnostics may improve real-time detection and classification of skin cancers.
• HPV vaccination may modestly reduce actinic keratosis burden, although its effect on keratinocyte cancer was not yet demonstrated in the reported follow-up.
• Overall, the presentation argues that laser-based interventions are emerging as a translational platform for both skin cancer immunotherapy and skin cancer prevention.