Dr. Seiwert on Immunotherapy in Head and Neck Cancer

Tanguy Y. Seiwert, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the impact of immunotherapy agents as treatment of patients with head and neck cancer.

Immunotherapy agents are proving to be quite active in the field of head and neck cancer, with 20% to 25% response rates in patients with both HPV-positive and HPV-negative disease, Seiwert explains. However, the key benefit with PD-1 agents is survival, he says. In heavily pretreated patients, median survival is approximately 10 months with immunotherapy.

Given the exciting phase III data with nivolumab in head and neck cancer, Seiwert predicts that the FDA will approve both nivolumab and pembrolizumab in 2016.

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