Immunotherapy for head and neck cancer: the future of treatment?

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the sixth most common cancer worldwide with >500,000 cases diagnosed each year. HNSCC patients often present to the clinic with advanced disease and are managed with a multi-disciplinary approach consisting of surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation. Morbidity and quality of life issues are major challenges in this patient population due to the debilitating effects of standard of care treatment paradigms. There is a critical need for new therapeutic approaches to manage HNSCC with better anti-tumor activities and toxicity profiles. Immunotherapy has gained traction as a precision medicine initiative to manage solid malignancies.

Areas covered: The authors review current knowledge of immune escape mechanisms and discuss key immunotherapies in HNSCC with an emphasis on clinical trials data.

Expert opinion: The excitement over the potential of immunotherapy to manage solid malignancies, including HNSCC is high and warranted based on the impressive clinical data accrued to date. Research in immunity and immune modulation in cancer has been invigorated and offers the potential to reveal novel vulnerabilities that may be exploitable pharmacologically. The evolution of immunotherapy will continue and move toward rational combinations with other immunotherapies or molecularly-targeted agents in the first-line, adjuvant, and recurrent/metastatic settings in HNSCC.

KEYWORDS:

• Head and neck cancer
• immune escape
• immunosuppression
• and immunotherapy

Article highlights

• Immunotherapy is an exciting and rapidly evolving field that is applicable to all malignancies, including HNSCC.

• Impressive clinical data have revealed the potential of immunotherapy to improve HNSCC management, with better patient survival and reduced morbidity.

• Clinical trials are ongoing to evaluate novel immunotherapies as single agents or in combinatorial regimens, for treatment-naive and recurrent/metastatic HNSCC.

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Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Additional information

Funding

This manuscript has not been funded.