MINI REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Microbial Immunology
Ipilimumab, -omics, head and neck cancers – update in 2025
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Medical Laboratory Diagnostics – Fahrenheit Biobank BBMRI.pl, Medical University of Gdansk, Poland, Gdansk, Poland
- 2Division of Clinical Anatomy, Medical University of Gdansk, Poland, Gdansk, Poland
- 3Department of Medical Laboratory Diagnostics, Medical University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland
- 4Department of Medical Laboratory Diagnostics – Fahrenheit Biobank BBMRI.pl, Medical University of Gdansk, Gdańsk, Poland
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Immunotherapy employing immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) represents a pivotal approach for managing recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancers (HNCs). Ipilimumab is fully human monoclonal IgG1κ antibody against cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4), which can be introduced as monotherapy or dual immunological regimen with nivolumab (anti-PD-1, programmed death-1). The background of using these monoclonal antibodies as combination immunotherapy is strongly associated with their different mechanisms of action. CTLA-4 and PD-1 are able to regulate the function of T-cells with other manners. Despite the fact that in some cases, the better efficacy of immunotherapy with ipilimumab + nivolumab is observed in HNCs, the overall effect regarding the comparison of ipilimumab versus ipilimumab + nivolumab is still unclear. Microbiome is one of the biomarker, which affects the response to immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors regarding also ipilimumab. Nevertheless, data are strongly undiscovered in this context taking into consideration HNCs. The beneficial signature of microbiome contributes to the prevention of immune-related adverse events caused by ipilimumab. Notably, the incidence of gastrointestinal side effects induced
Keywords: head and neck cancers, immune checkpoint inhibitors, ipilimumab, Microbial Metabolites, microbiome, Nivolumab
Received: 02 Nov 2025; Accepted: 23 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Kucharski, Kosiński, Kalinowski and Kaźmierczak-Siedlecka. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Karolina Kaźmierczak-Siedlecka
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.