SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Med.
Sec. Nuclear Medicine
This article is part of the Research TopicRecent Advances in Theranostics: Endocrine Tumours and BeyondView all articles
Targeted β-Therapy with Rhenium-aided therapy for Cutaneous Lesions: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted
Sajjad Sadeghpour1
Ramin Sadeghi1
Atena Aghaee1
Amin Saber Tanha1
Alessio Rizzo2*
Giorgio Treglia3,4,5Saba Sadeghpour6- 1Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
- 2IRCCS Candiolo Cancer Institute, Turin, Italy
- 3Universite de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
- 4Repubblica e Cantone Ticino Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale, Bellinzona, Switzerland
- 5Universita della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
- 6Shahid Madani Hospital, Tabriz, Iran
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Non-melanoma skin cancer is the most prevalent malignancy. Primary treatments may at times yield suboptimal results. In such circumstances, alternative therapies or the integration of different modalities may be required to achieve complete excision and prevent recurrence. Methods: We examined studies published up to July 2025, using databases including PubMed and Scopus, focusing on the performance of rhenium-assisted therapies with respect to therapeutic efficacy and potential adverse effects. Studies investigating the therapeutic outcomes of rhenium-assisted therapies for cutaneous lesions were considered. The primary endpoint was the response rate to rhenium-assisted therapies. Results: This systematic review and meta-analysis included 10 studies involving 433 patients and over 618 lesions. Seven studies were pooled in meta-analysis, with Rhenium-assisted therapy achieving a complete response in 88.67% of lesions (95% CI: 84.7–91.7%) and overall response in 92.9% (95% CI: 89.1–95.5%). A leave-one-out analysis was performed to assess the study's impact on heterogeneity, revealing that one study markedly influenced the pooled effect. Excluding this outlier substantially reduced heterogeneity, while the overall mean effect remained significant (complete response 94%, 95% CI [90%, 96%]; overall response 97%, 95% CI [92%, 99%]). Conclusion: Rhenium-assisted therapy for skin cancer appears effective and safe in treating lesions unresponsive to standard options. Rhenium-based therapy may represent a valuable tool, providing advantages over conventional approaches. Further studies are warranted to confirm its efficacy and establish standardised protocols.
Keywords: Skin Cancer, Rhenium, resin, skin cancer therapy, Systematic review
Received: 17 Sep 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sadeghpour, Sadeghi, Aghaee, Tanha, Rizzo, Treglia and Sadeghpour. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Alessio Rizzo, alessio.rizzo@ircc.it
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.