Future Research to Examine Immunotherapies for Early Disease Anal Carcinoma

Charles J. Schneider, MD, FACP, a clinical professor of Medicine at the Abramson Cancer Center at Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, discusses the next steps in managing and treating patients with anal carcinoma.

While the treatment of patients with early disease anal carcinoma has changed drastically since the 1980s, Schneider believes the next step for this research is to examine immunotherapy.

Immunotherapies and targeted therapies have been used to treat patients with anal carcinoma already, icluding nivolumab (Opdivo) and pembrolizumab (Keytruda). Still, further advances are needed to prolong survival and decrease the incidence of this disease.

Transcription:

0:08 | I think the future is going to hinge on immunotherapy bench research and research on targeted drugs that may change the immune environment in anal cancer or specifically target anal cancer cells. I think the future looks bright in a cancer that's rare but still increasing in incidence and mortality. It is important that we make further advances.

0:43 | The only thing I would say to patients and families is to please participate in trials because that's really the only avenue that we have to improve standard of care and improve survival of anal cancer and any other cancer.