Clinical trial shows promising results for head and neck cancer drug

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the sixth most common cancer globally, and treatment options for patients with advanced disease are limited.

But soon, one more option may be available. This past April, former Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Loren S. Michel, MD, and his colleagues at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center presented exciting results from a recent clinical trial. They found that patients with advanced HNSCC—who had already undergone cancer treatment but whose tumors still progressed—benefitted from a drug known as sacituzumab govitecan (SG).

SG is an antibody drug that binds to an antigen, known as Trop-2, found only on the surface of cancer cells and in particular abundance on the surface of HNSCC cells. As a Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator in the 2000s, Dr. Michel helped establish Trop-2 as an attractive cancer drug target.

This recent trial was part of a “basket study," which tests a single drug across multiple types of cancer. Future findings may indicate clinical potential for SG against other solid tumors as well.

This research was published in Clinical Cancer Research.