An immunotherapy drug is now being hailed as a potential game changer after an international clinical trial revealed it greatly improved the survival of patients with relapsed head and neck cancer, a condition known to be notoriously difficult to treat.
In a phase III clinical trial, the drug nivolumab extended the survival rate of head and neck cancer patients in whom chemotherapy did not work. The treatment also did so with fewer side effects compared with other currently used therapeutic options.
In the major trial described in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Oct. 9, 36 percent of the patients who took the immunotherapy drug nivolumab were alive after one year, which is more than double compared with 17 percent of patients who were treated with chemotherapy.
No treatment option is currently available for improving the survival of patients with metastatic head and neck cancers. The patients who participated in the trial, which was funded by Bristol-Myers Squibb, are in fact expected to survive no longer than six months.
Of the 361 participants, 240 received nivolumab while 121 received chemotherapy. Patients who were based in the UK received the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, the only treatment greenlighted by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for advanced head and neck cancer.
Patients on nivolumab had median survival of 7.5 months, which is more than two months longer than the median survival of 5.1 months among those who received chemotherapy.
Survival benefit, however, was more pronounced in those whose tumors had human papillomavirus (HPV). Those in the nivolumab group survived an average of 9.1 months while those in chemotherapy group had 4.4 months survival.
"Among patients with platinum-refractory, recurrent squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck, treatment with nivolumab resulted in longer overall survival than treatment with standard, single-agent therapy," study researcher Kevin Harrington, from The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and colleagues wrote in their study.
Fewer patients in the nivolumab group also experienced serious side effects at only 13 percent compared with 35 percent in those who were treated with chemotherapy.
The patients given nivolumab remained stable over the course of the treatment period while those given chemotherapy claimed to feel physically, emotionally and socially worse.
The risk of developing head and neck cancer increases with certain environmental and lifestyle factors such as exposure to carcinogen, heavy alcohol use and smoking tobacco. Infection with HPV also boosts risk of many types of head and neck cancer.
