Brazilian perspectives on treating head and neck cancer

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Published: 21 Dec 2016
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Dr Chistian Domenge - Sociedad Franco Brasilera de Oncología, Brazil

Dr Domenge speaks with ecancertv at the IX French-Brazilian Oncology Congress about this years conference, from which he highlights presentations on advances in immuno-oncology.

Discussing head and neck cancers, he considers how to best limit toxicity using multi-disciplinary techniques, including immunotherapeutics in the future.

About this congress, there was a small one ten years ago and now we reach more or less 1,500 people. It’s a lot of news about oncology. The news is immunology and we have a lot of speakers, top speakers. The first one is Caroline Robert about melanoma; the second one is Martine Piccart on breast cancer; the third one is Benjamin Besse and the fourth is Axel Lecesne about sarcoma. These are very news about these areas and this year I think it’s the best congress in terms of news, in terms of advance in oncology.

On head and neck cancer we have thirty years of research of triumphs and there are two points that are now the right points to treat the patients: it’s radiochemotherapy and the second point is laryngeal preservation. But today we don’t know what type of treatment is the most effective without toxicity. It’s why we didn’t mind the new concept in oropharyngeal cancer that we have two types of disease – HPV positive and HPV negative. HPV positive is the best form of cancer in head and neck and there are several trials showing better results decreasing the intensification of the treatment. So this is new. The second point is really important, it’s that immunotherapy is coming in this area too.

It’s important to look at all these areas because all these areas are converging to the same point, to treat patients in multidisciplinary treatments. The second, we are looking for the news with immunology. This is a new field and we have to know what it is now on our present and the future of this treatment.