RTP On Demand — Head & Neck/Thyroid | Research To PracticeLUX-Head & Neck 2: A Phase III trial of adjuvant afatinib in locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck
1:50 minutes.
TRANSCRIPTION:
DR COHEN: It’s really looking at a group of patients we have no therapy for. Right now we observe them. And that group of patients is patients who are treated with curative intent in the first line, patients with locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, but we know that they have a high risk of recurrence. These are patients typically with Stage IVA, IVB disease, HPV-negative or HPV-positive and moderate to heavy smokers. And we know that they will have about a 50% chance — 5-0 — of recurrent disease. And unfortunately, when most of these patients develop recurrent disease, they’re not curable. And so the effort is to try and reduce that number and reduce it dramatically. And because of the biology of EGFR and the entire EGFR family in head and neck cancer, we hypothesize that afatinib could be effective in this group of patients. And the study is simply that: it’s afatinib versus placebo in those patients at high risk of recurrence with locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck who had been treated with curative intent with chemotherapy/radiation. DR LOVE: And I guess it sounds like it might be interesting to look at biomarkers here, too. DR COHEN: Oh, completely. And as you might guess, we're collecting the tumors. We are eager to explore the biomarkers once the study is done. We’d be looking at elements around the EGFR pathway, elements around the PI3-kinase pathway. And, of course, even planning to do more sophisticated genetic testing on the tumors to see if there are particular groups that in fact benefit from afatinib. |