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Combination Chemotherapy of Head and Neck Cancer in the United States

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New Drugs in Cancer Chemotherapy

Part of the book series: Recent Results in Cancer Research ((RECENTCANCER,volume 76))

Abstract

In 1973 Bertino and co-workers [3] reviewed the chemotherapy of head and neck cancer. They concluded that “several agents are effective in the treatment of epidermoid cancers of the head and neck. The time is ripe for the development of effective drug combinations and programs utilizing chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery in the treatment of these difficult neoplasms.” During the six years that have elapsed since those words were written, oncologists have been working busily along these very lines. In doing so, they have been spurred on by several factors: a resurgence of interest in methotrexate, particularly in high dose with leucovorin rescue; the identification of cis-diammine-dichloroplatinum (II) as an agent with significant activity in these tumors; and, perhaps most important, the climate of general optimism surrounding the combined-modality approach to human solid tumors. In this review we shall examine the general directions of systemic drug therapy for epidermoid carcinoma of the head and neck (ECHN) in the United States over the past few years. We shall not deal with intra-arterial chemotherapy or with the combination of single drugs and radiotherapy, both of which have been reviewed in detail elsewhere [3, 9, 20, 27].

Supported in part by NIH grants CA-08748 and CA-08526

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  1. Solid Tumor Service, Department of Medicine, Memorial-Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Avenue, USA, New York, NY, 10021

    R. E. Wittes

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Northern California Cancer Program, 1801 Page Mill Road, Suite 200, Building B, Palo Alto, CA, 94304, USA

    Stephen K. Carter

  2. Cancer Chemotherapy Center, Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, Kami-Ikebukuro 1-37-1, Toshima-ku, Tokyo 170, Japan

    Yoshi Sakurai

  3. Institute of Microbial Chemistry, 14-23 Kamiosaki 3-Chome, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141, Japan

    Hamoa Umezawa

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Wittes, R.E. (1981). Combination Chemotherapy of Head and Neck Cancer in the United States. In: Carter, S.K., Sakurai, Y., Umezawa, H. (eds) New Drugs in Cancer Chemotherapy. Recent Results in Cancer Research, vol 76. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-81565-2_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-81565-2_25

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