Immunotherapy on its own is better than aggressive chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for advanced head and neck cancer, according to surprising new data from a major phase III clinical trial. Patients lived for longer and had far lower rates of side-effects if they took the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab than those who received an 'extreme' combination of two chemotherapies and a targeted drug. People with an immune hallmark called PD-L1 in their tumours did particularly well on pembrolizumab - living for around 40% longer.
And while only around a fifth of patients overall responded to pembrolizumab, those who did so often did spectacularly well - with a median length of the response of 20.9 months compared with only 4.2 months with aggressive chemotherapy. The trial was led in the UK by a team at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and a foundation of trust and involved…
