ASCO: You’re listening to a podcast from Cancer.Net. This cancer information website is produced by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, known as ASCO, the world’s leading professional organization for doctors who care for people with cancer. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Cancer research discussed in this podcast is ongoing, so the data described here may change as research progresses. Every year, the ASCO Annual Meeting brings together attendees from around the globe to learn about the latest research in the treatment and care of people with cancer. This year, attendees from 138 countries worldwide gathered virtually for the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, held Friday, May 29 through Sunday, May 31. In the annual Research Round Up podcast series, Cancer.Net Associate Editors answer the question, “What was the most exciting or practice-changing research in your field presented at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program?” In this episode, editors discuss new research in the fields of head and neck cancer and melanoma. First, Dr. Ezra Cohen will discuss new research in squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck and adenoid cystic carcinoma. Dr. Cohen is Co-Director of the San Diego Center for Precision Immunotherapy, Associate Director of Translational Science and leads the Solid Tumor Therapeutics research program at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health. He is also the Cancer.Net Associate Editor for Head and Neck Cancers. View Dr. Cohen’s disclosures at Cancer.Net. Dr. Cohen: Hi. This is Dr. Ezra Cohen from University of California, San Diego, Moores Cancer Center. And today I'll be reviewing head/neck cancer abstracts from the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. I have consulted for Merck in the past. As all of us know, this meeting was virtual this year, but we had an opportunity to see the broadcasts through the virtual website. And there were a few abstracts that I thought were relevant to not only current standards of care but also to the future of research in head/neck cancer. The first one I'll talk about is a Japanese study that compared post-operative chemo radiotherapy of 3 weekly cisplatin versus weekly cisplatin in high-risk patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. This was indeed an adjuvant trial or a post-operative trial, and really addressed an important question in the field that had been controversial and perhaps continues to be going forward. The investigators compared a dose of 40 milligrams per meter squared given every week versus the standard 100 milligram per meter squared of cisplatin given every three weeks and assess patients for local-regional control and overall survival. Interestingly enough and as opposed to some prior reports, the combination of weekly cisplatin and radiation actually proved to be superior with respect to both local-regional control and survival while providing a regimen that was fairly well-tolerated and in the aggregate actually had a lower toxicity rate than the every 3 week cisplatin, suggesting that at least at 40 mg per meter squared, we may have a regimen that is in the post-operative setting more efficacious, and better tolerated, and that it may be time to revisit standards of care or at least to perhaps accept 2 different standards of care in the post-operative setting; one being high dose every 3 weeks cisplatin and the other being weekly cisplatin. The other relevant abstract from the oral session was another randomized trial, this time from South Korea. Looking at adenoid cystic carcinoma, here patients were randomized to either receive a vascular endothe