Hot of the press IJROBP - The Red Journal: Role of SABR in oligometastatic head and neck cancer: a GORTEC randomized trial Full text here: doi.org/10.1016/j.ijro…

Our own Al Garfall emphasized the critical importance of NIH funding for biomedical research. Targeted Oncology spr.ly/60150r7CF

Mark your calendars! 🎗️ Our Head and Neck Cancer Awareness event is happening April 21–25, featuring our exciting raffle! Stay tuned for a sneak peek at this year’s raffle items and ways you can support the cause. #PennHNCawareness #SaveTheDate #SupportTheCause @penncancer

Advancing understanding of interactions between host and viral DNA elements on hybrid episomes - recently proven to exist in many oropharyngeal cancers through long read sequencing

Excited to now be enrolling patients in our clinical trial using lidocaine for head and neck cancer, motivated by work from our lab @robleelab Dr. Zoey Miller showing potential anticancer effects. A testament to the bench to bedside mission Penn Otorhinolaryngology clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06747…

Pierre Blanchard, MD Very provocative study. Here is the abstract, for some more specifics:

Best oral abstract in HPV+ OPC session at #AHNS2025! Congrats to presenter JN Gallant, MD, PhD and rest of @basulab1 team for our study that links an expanded subset of tumor cells with low HPV E6/E7 expression to recurrence risk after TORS-based therapy Penn Otorhinolaryngology Penn Medicine - Abramson Cancer Center

#ASCO25 KEYNOTE-630 📒Adjuvant pembro after surgery and PORT for up to 9 cycles in high-risk locally advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma did not improve RFS/OS. David Sher John De Almeida Sana Karam, MD, PhD Nadeem Riaz Nancy Lee Marcus Butler Sean McBride

Fascinating presentation at ASCO today of divergent results from two subtly different adjuvant anti-PD1 phase 3 studies for high risk CSCC (KN630 vs C-Post). The latter approach seems likely to become SOC...

Interesting phase 3 for advanced resectable HNSCC w/ similar design to KN689 - key difference beyond omitting neoadj. part is inclusion based on high risk path . Losing KN689's DM benefit makes sense here, but why it produces LRC benefit when KN689 did not puzzles me.

In case anyone else is also having trouble keeping track...

Work with Sagar Kansara, MD, Lực Morris, @AHNS to help starting to assess how best to apply neoadjuvant + adjuvant anti-PD1 to advanced resectable head and neck cancer in standard clinical practice

FDA approves pembrolizumab for resectable, locally advanced HNSCC based on KEYNOTE‑689. Led by Dr. Ravindra Uppaluri Ravi Uppaluri, MDPhD, the study showed a 30% drop in recurrence risk. Full details from The ASCO Post: ascopost.com/news/june-2025… #HNSCC #Oncology

nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

I’ve been urged by colleagues to broadcast this loudly Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD Robert F. Kennedy Jr 🎤 🇺🇸 📣 📢 ☎️

A Penn Medicine - Abramson Cancer Center team has defined a network of tumor-intrinsic and immune-related molecular traits that distinguish the subset of early stage HPV+ oropharyngeal cancers predisposed to fail standard therapy:oxford.ly/45wkbOu @basulab1 Penn Medicine Penn Otorhinolaryngology Univ. of Pennsylvania Department of Cancer Biology.

T cells do the heavy lifting when it comes to the anti-tumor action of checkpoint immunotherapy. But do antibodies play a role too? That’s the question @yile_dai looked to answer in his thesis work, out today in nature! 🧵below nature.com/articles/s4158…

thehill.com/homenews/senat…

Long-Term Follow-Up of E3311, an ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group Phase II Trial of Transoral Surgery and Risk-Based Adjuvant Treatment in Human Papillomavirus–Initiated Oropharynx Cancer | Journal of Clinical Oncology ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.12…

Wow - some truly visionary philanthropy here. cancerletter.com/conversation-w…