ASCO 2021 | Treatment de-escalation in head and neck cancer

Treatment de-escalation aims to reduce the toxicity of treatments whilst retaining their efficacy. Ari Rosenberg, MD, University of Chicago Medicine, Chicago, IL, discusses de-escalation strategies in head and neck cancer. There are numerous de-escalation strategies currently being tested for head and neck cancer, including response adaptive de-escalation e.g., OPTIMA II (NCT03107182), de-escalation of definitive chemoradiation, by lowering the dose of radiation and chemotherapy, adaptive de-escalation with radiation, and de-escalation in the adjuvant setting based on pathologic risk. Dr Rosenberg states that no optimal de-escalation strategy has yet been defined, hence future research must compare de-escalation strategies to standard of care chemoradiation in randomized trials, to evaluate improvements in toxicity relative to overall survival (OS). This interview took place at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2021 Virtual Meeting.