Immuntherapie von Kopf-Hals-Tumoren

BackgroundThis year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting included interesting data on first-line therapy of nasopharyngeal carcinomas with PD‑1 inhibitors and on checkpoint inhibition in various clinical constellations. At the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) meeting, the results of the CheckMate-651 study were presented.Materials and methodsAll abstracts and presentations from the ASCO and ESMO meetings 2021 on immunotherapy in head and neck cancer (HNSCC) were evaluated for their relevance. The most interesting studies are elaborated upon herein.ResultsStudies on locally advanced HNSCC showed an improved response after neoadjuvant pembrolizumab administration. A second cycle did not improve the response rate, but the proportion of patients with a good response was almost doubled. The CheckRad CD8 study showed an improvement in progression-free survival by induction chemoimmunotherapy with tremelimumab and durvalumab followed by stratification according to the CD8 immune cell infiltrate. Two studies were presented on first-line treatment of recurrent/metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinomas. Chemoimmunotherapy showed a higher response rate and prolonged progression-free survival with a similar adverse event profile. In recurrent/metastatic HNSCC, the CheckMate 651 study showed an increased duration of response with nivolumab and ipilimumab and higher response rates than pembrolizumab alone. The primary endpoints for overall survival were not achieved.ConclusionPD‑1 inhibition has great potential to change the therapeutic landscape for nasopharyngeal carcinomas in the future. In HNSCC, CD8 tumor infiltrate presents a promising predictive marker for selecting patients who can benefit from radioimmunotherapy. The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab did not improve overall survival in palliative first-line therapy; thus, no change in the current standard is expected.