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Information regarding the 10th annual meeting of the Skin Care in Organ Transplant Recipients in Europe (SCOPE) held at Rijkshospitalet in Oslo, Norway on June 10-12, 2010 is presented. Topics include skin lesions' tenderness, skin cancer awareness, and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the skin and human papilloma viruses (HPVs). Moreover, the event was attended by 60 participants from the U.S. and Europe including Irma Wisgerhof, Ingo Nindl, and Nikol Mladkova.

Information about the 14th Annual Meeting of Skin Care in Organ Transplant Patients Europe (SCOPE) that was held in Leiden, the Netherlands from May 15-18, 2014 is presented. Topics discussed include the epidemiology of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) in organ transplant recipients (OTRs), incidence of skin cancer in comparison with other malignancies, and risk factors in lung transplant recipients (LTRs) for skin cancer. The speakers include Britta Krynitz, Chantal Bachmann, and Liliane Borik.

A correction to the article about the meeting report on skin care in organ transplant patients that was published in the previous issue is presented which inadvertently provided incorrect affiliations.

Keratoacanthomas are commonly occurring benign skin lesions localized to sun-exposed areas. They typically develop rapidly and may show cellular atypia and infiltration like cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas, but they finally regress spontaneously. This benign lesion shows a high degree of genetic instability as assessed by comparative genomic hybridization, with 35.7% (25 of 70) of the analyzed lesions harboring chromosomal aberrations. The same frequency of genetic imbalance was found in lesions from immunosuppressed organ transplant recipients (36.4%, 20 of 55) and in patients with keratoacanthomas without immunosuppression (33.3%, five of 15), indicating a common pathway in both situations. Recurrent aberrations, given as a fraction of lesions with aberrations, were gains on 8q (20.0%), 1p and 9q (each 16.0%), and deletions on 3p (20.0%), 9p (20.0%), 19p (20.0%), and 19q (16.0%). Many of the most frequently appearing aberrations in keratoacanthomas were not detected in any of the 10 squamous cell carcinomas analyzed, whereas some aberrations were shared by both types of lesions. Aberrations were found in early and late stages of keratoacanthoma development, indicating a role for genetic instability in the progression as well as involution of keratoacanthomas. There were no significant correlations between cytologic atypia and genetic imbalance, or between degree of infiltration and genetic aberrations, although there was a trend for keratoacanthomas with severe atypia to have aberrations. Thus malignant phenotypic development does not appear to be driven by the detected genetic aberrations. More detailed studies of chromosomal areas with recurrent aberrations are needed for the localization of putative genes that determine the biologic behavior of keratoacanthomas, and that may distinguish them from squamous cell carcinomas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]