About this Research Topic
Head and neck cancer presents a poor prognosis, with low survival rates for advanced-stage patients and minimal improvement in survival trends. Treatment strategies currently include surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, and certain targeted therapies. Immunotherapy (such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, adoptive T cell therapy, chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, etc.) has received tremendous attention and is revolutionizing cancer treatment. Several clinical trials of immune checkpoint inhibitors have shown promising results for head and neck cancer treatment. However, only a subset of patients experiences clinical benefits. We are still in the early stages of understanding the potential of immunotherapy and know little about the best way to combine surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy with immunotherapy. Besides, many challenges remain to be overcome to improve the clinical outcome of immunotherapy, including side effects, patient selection, identification of predictive biomarkers, and exploitation of novel immunotherapy. In brief, more novel research needs to be performed to achieve ideal treatments for clinical use and improve the survival of patients with head and neck cancer.
The Research topic aims to: i) identify novel targets for immunotherapy; ii) report adverse events of immunotherapy and provide a reference basis for the rational clinical use of the drugs; iii) exploit predictive biomarkers for immunotherapy response and stratify patients that may benefit from immunotherapy in head and neck cancer; iv) elucidate the impact of HPV infection on the tumor biology, the host response and the sensitivity to the immune checkpoint; v) explore the impacts of the head and neck cancer microenvironment on immunotherapy; vi) improve multimodality therapy for head and neck cancer.
We welcome submissions of Original Research, Clinical Trial, Methods, Systematic Reviews, Reviews, and Mini-Reviews focusing on head and neck cancer, covering but not limited to the below aspects:
1. Improvements of multimodality therapy for head and neck cancer
2. The impact of HPV infection on the tumor biology, the host response and the sensitivity to immune checkpoint
3. Identification of novel targets for immunotherapy
4. Adverse events of immunotherapy in head and neck cancer
5. Identification of predictive biomarkers for immunotherapy response in head and neck cancer
6. Impacts of the head and neck cancer microenvironment on immunotherapy
Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (clinical cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.
The Research topic aims to: i) identify novel targets for immunotherapy; ii) report adverse events of immunotherapy and provide a reference basis for the rational clinical use of the drugs; iii) exploit predictive biomarkers for immunotherapy response and stratify patients that may benefit from immunotherapy in head and neck cancer; iv) elucidate the impact of HPV infection on the tumor biology, the host response and the sensitivity to the immune checkpoint; v) explore the impacts of the head and neck cancer microenvironment on immunotherapy; vi) improve multimodality therapy for head and neck cancer.
We welcome submissions of Original Research, Clinical Trial, Methods, Systematic Reviews, Reviews, and Mini-Reviews focusing on head and neck cancer, covering but not limited to the below aspects:
1. Improvements of multimodality therapy for head and neck cancer
2. The impact of HPV infection on the tumor biology, the host response and the sensitivity to immune checkpoint
3. Identification of novel targets for immunotherapy
4. Adverse events of immunotherapy in head and neck cancer
5. Identification of predictive biomarkers for immunotherapy response in head and neck cancer
6. Impacts of the head and neck cancer microenvironment on immunotherapy
Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (clinical cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.
Keywords: Head and Neck Cancer, Immunotherapy, Multimodality Therapy, Predictive Biomarker, Adverse Event
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
