Immunotherapy and Immune Regulation of Head and Neck Cancer

Head and neck cancer is an immunosuppressive disease in which lymphocyte infiltration is reduced, T cells are depleted, and exhausted and immune suppressive signals are elevated. The imbalance of the immune system plays an important role in the progression of head and neck cancer. Cancer immunotherapy functions by eliminating or reducing the immune suppression of tumor microenvironment and eliciting the immune clearance of tumor cells. In recent years, immunotherapy has achieved great success in the treatment of recurrent/metastatic head and neck cancer. KEYNOTE-012, KEYNOTE-055, CHECKMATE-141, KEYNOTE-040, KEYNOTE-048 and other clinical trials showed the superiority of immunotherapy over chemotherapy in the treatment of patients with advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). KEYNOTE-048 reflected that immunotherapy with or without chemotherapy is now the standard of care (SOC) for the first-line treatment of metastatic HNSCC. However, how to improve the response rate and efficacy of immunotherapy remains an unsolved problem. In addition, as HPV-related and HPV-unrelated HNSCC have different immune landscape, research focusing on HPV-related HNSCC is awaited to uncover how HPV mediate the response of immunotherapy in HNSCC. A deeper understanding on the immune microenvironment of head and neck cancer will help discover biomarkers or certain types of immunomodulatory cells involving in immune regulation of head and neck cancer. These studies will help screening of the immunotherapy-sensitive patients, and improving the response rate of immunotherapy in head and neck cancer.

This Research Topic aims at the immunology and immune regulation of head and neck cancer, and recent advances on immunotherapies in head and neck cancer. We welcome submissions of Original Research, Reviews, and Mini-Reviews focusing on head and neck cancer, covering but not limited to the below aspects:

• Strategies to screen immunotherapy-sensitive head and neck cancer patients
• Strategies to improve the response rate of immunotherapy
• HPV mediation in the response of immunotherapy in Head and Neck cancer
• Combination of immunotherapy with radiotherapy and chemotherapy
• Biomarkers related to immunotherapy for head and neck cancer
• Tumor immune microenvironment and immunotherapy response

Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent 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.