Head & Neck Cancers

The FDA has granted a priority review designation to a supplemental biologics license application for pembrolizumab (Keytruda) alone or in combination with platinum and 5-fluorouracil chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Thanks to technological advances, the past several decades have witnessed a blossoming appreciation of the varied composition of these microbial communities, their complex and dynamic relationship with the host, and the way they affect health and disease.

Jed A. Katzel, MD, Hematology, Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center, discusses differences in treatment decisions between men and women with head and neck cancer.

Hisham Mehanna, PhD, BMedSc, MBChB, FRCS, chair, Head and Neck Surgery director, Institute of Head and Neck Studies and Education at the School of Cancer Studies, University of Birmingham, discusses the implications of the updated staging system for patients with HPV-positive head and neck cancer.

Ezra Cohen, MD, associate director, Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, discusses the promise of immunotherapy in the treatment of patients with head and neck cancer.

An ongoing randomized phase III study will compare the safety and efficacy of atezolizumab with placebo as adjuvant therapy after definitive local therapy in patients with high-risk, locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

The PD-1 inhibitor cemiplimab in combination with radiotherapy, cyclophosphamide, and GM-CSF did not demonstrate efficacy superior to other PD-1 inhibitor monotherapies in patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Nivolumab demonstrated durable response and overall survival rates in a real-world analysis of patients with platinum-refractory, recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Over the past 30 years, from the discovery of a fusion rearrangement to the recent promise of LOXO-292, RET targeting has gone from distant concept toward clinical reality.

Durvalumab alone and in combination with tremelimumab did not improve overall survival versus standard-of-care chemotherapy in patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma who progressed after platinum-based chemotherapy.

Maurie Markman, MD, discusses the steps that the scientific community needs to take to increase public acceptance of the vaccine against the human papillomavirus.

Alexander Drilon, MD, medical oncologist, clinical director, Early Drug Development Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the FDA approval larotrectinib in NTRK-positive cancers.

Barbara A. Burtness, MD, discusses the impact that the KEYNOTE-048 data could have on the treatment of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

After more than 2 decades of change in the epidemiology of oropharyngeal cancers, the choice of optimal treatment for patients with human papillomavirus–positive disease remains elusive.

Barbara Burtness, MD, professor of medicine, Yale Cancer Center, discusses frontline immunotherapy in head and neck cancer.