Dr Jennifer Choe discusses head and neck dancer relapse, new treatment trials, promising responses
Source: www.ajmc.com Author: Brooke McCormick Jennifer Choe, MD, PhD, shared her thoughts on why head and neck cancer patients relapse after radiation therapy, new head and neck cancer treatment trials, and promising responses from these trials. Choe is a head and neck oncologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and was a presenter at The American Journal of Managed Care®’s Institute for Value-Based Medicine® held in Nashville, Tennessee on August 17, 2023. Transcript Can you explain some of the thought behind why there is disease relapse in head and neck cancers after radiation treatment? There's a lot of theoretical basis as to why we think this is the case. A lot is driven by just aggressive biology; it's really not known. Head and neck cancers are considered immune responsive, technically speaking, but the response rates still are pretty low, in general, and whether or not the immune system and head and neck cancer patients are depressed compared to other cancers. I, in theory, think that a part of it is actually the radiation creating an environment where there could be a reduction in the body's ability to regulate the immune system. There's an immune suppressed state for these patients that could be due to radiation of the lymph nodes that's decreasing the ability for the immune system to respond, but also the local radiation induced immune suppression effects that may be producing a more conducive environment for the cancer to return. What are some of the trials evaluating new treatment regimens [...]