Immunotherapy for head and neck cancer

Immunotherapy is a new approach to treatment of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), which is most effective in patients with minimal residual disease. Only 50% of these patients treated with conventional therapies achieve five-year survival. Further, HNSCC patients are immunosuppressed and thus unable to control tumor progression. The goal of immunotherapy is to reverse the suppressive effects induced by the tumor, and to activate anti-tumor response directed against tumor-associated antigens (TAA) expressed by tumor cells. Current immunotherapies for head and neck cancer utilize many strategies to achieve these goals, i.e., transfer of autologous dendritic cells, adoptive transfer of T cells or NK cells, gene therapy, tumor derived proteins, cytokines and mono-
clonal antibodies. Anti-tumor vaccines represent one form of immunotherapy. Developing of optimal immunotherapy for HNSCC used along with conventional treatments may improve patients’ overall survival. Most of the currently used anti-cancer vaccines for HNSCC are in phase I/II clinical trials. This review briefly describes a theoretical basis for immunotherapy, immunotherapeutic strategies currently beeing in clinical trials, as well as hurdles to successful immunotherapy in HNSCC patients.