Novel Cancer Immunotherapies and Molecular Biomarkers in Head and Neck Cancer

Abstract

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) remains a capricious disease with poor survival. Given the well-documented recurrence rates and comorbidities associated with conventional treatments, there is a desperate need for innovations in HNSCC diagnosis and treatment. Identifying patient risk at the time of diagnosis is critical to selecting the appropriate level of treatment escalation. At present, adjuvant treatment selection is determined solely by clinicopathologic features, primarily tumor staging. However, patients in the same disease stage have highly variable outcomes. Recent discoveries in biomarker research have revealed molecular markers that, when combined with clinicopathologic features, provide a significantly improved metric for assessing HNSCC patient risk. Similarly, promising new immunotherapy treatments have emerged that utilize the host’s immune response to combat disease. Of particular interest, the use of injectable biomaterials for localized controlled release of immunotherapies has shown promising potential in reducing off-target toxicity and allowing treatment de-escalation while targeting numerous immune pathways involved in cancer etiology. In this chapter, we review the latest advances in HNSCC diagnosis and treatment, including novel biomarkers and their clinical application in patient risk stratification as well as advances in immunotherapy through the development of cancer vaccines, immunomodulatory drugs, and implantable biomaterials for targeted drug delivery.