A study suggests that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine inhibits pathways that drive resistance to the chemotherapy agent cisplatin in head and neck cancers and restores tumor-killing effects of cisplatin in animal models.
Researchers from the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center demonstrated the potential of a novel treatment approach including immunotherapy to treat advanced human papillomavirus-negative head-and-neck squamous cell carcinoma. More than half of study participants had 50% or more of their tumors shrink after receiving the immunotherapy drug nivolumab with chemotherapy, followed by response-adaptive chemo-radiation therapy.
