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REVIEW article

Front. Oncol.

Sec. Head and Neck Cancer

Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1640960

This article is part of the Research TopicInnovating Aerodigestive Squamous Cancer Therapies across Disease SitesView all articles

Head and Neck Cancer – Emerging Targeted Therapies

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Norwalk Hospital, Norwalk, United States
  • 2Yale University, New Haven, United States
  • 3Yale University Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Systemic therapy remains the cornerstone of treatment for recurrent and metastatic (R/M) head and neck squamous cell cancers (HNSCC). However, there is a dearth of effective treatments beyond platinum combinations, anti-programmed death-1 (PD-1) agents and the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeting monoclonal antibody cetuximab. Recent years have seen several exciting new agents being tested in clinical trials. These are designed to target alternate oncogenic signaling pathways and have novel mechanistic compositions, including bi-specific antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates. This review will delve into the clinical limitations of currently approved systemic therapies, explore newer agents in development and highlight ongoing clinical trials using targeted therapies in this disease.

Keywords: head and neck cancer, Recurrence, metastases, Advanced, targeted therapies

Received: 04 Jun 2025; Accepted: 29 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Abouelkheer and Bhatia. 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: Aarti Bhatia, Yale University Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, United States

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