Dr. de Souza on Next Steps for Immunotherapy in Head and Neck Cancer

Jonas de Souza, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, University of Chicago Medicine, discusses some of the upcoming next steps regarding immunotherapy in head and neck cancer.

Potential next steps could include head-to-head comparisons of immunotherapy with the standard EXTREME regimen, which includes cetuximab (Erbitux) and platinum-based chemotherapy with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). According to de Souza, future research should examine whether immunotherapy is active and efficacious in the first-line setting for metastatic patients.

A big remaining question, he says, concerns the treatment of HPV-positive patients with head and neck cancer, who may require less therapy than others. He questions whether these patients should be treated the same as other individuals, or if they should, perhaps, receive less radiation therapy or chemotherapy. Further research is warranted in this space, says de Souza.