Are there advances in cervical cancer treatment that patients should know about? In this video, Dr. Joshua Cohen highlights the latest research, including the increasing role of immunotherapy, newly approved targeted therapies for recurrent cervical cancer, and emerging treatment approaches showing promise for patients.
Dr. Joshua G. Cohen is a board-certified gynecologic oncologist and Medical Director of the Gynecologic Cancer Program at the City of Hope Orange County. Learn more about Dr. Cohen.
Related Resources
Transcript
Katherine:
Dr. Cohen, are there recent advances in cervical cancer research and treatment that patients should know about?
Dr. Josh Cohen:
Yes, thank you. There are very important advances in cervical cancer, and the advances are dependent on where a patient is in her journey. If someone’s initially diagnosed with cervical cancer, we have recent data that suggests adding immunotherapy to a patient’s treatment plan can be very important for someone undergoing something called chemotherapy and radiation or the term “chemoradiation,” which is a combined treatment approach for patients who have an advanced cervical cancer that is not a surgically managed disease.
So, for patients who have a disease that’s spread beyond the cervix, the standard of care for most patients is giving weekly chemotherapy and daily radiation for approximately five weeks. For years, we did this without the use of immunotherapy. In the last 2 years, there have really been very strong indicators with clinical trials that we now should add immunotherapy to that regimen, and patients are doing better as a result. So, I would say for patients who are being managed with a recommendation for chemotherapy and radiation, talk to your provider about the use of immunotherapy.
Katherine:
Yeah, okay.
Dr. Josh Cohen:
In the recurrent setting, meaning for patients where sadly the cancer has come back, we now have new drugs that are available for these patients. A more recent advancement is a drug called tisotumab vedotin-tftv (Tivdak), which is an antibody drug conjugate. This is a targeted therapy that seems to hack the activity in cervical cancer.
So, for patients who have unfortunately progressed on standard of care treatments with chemotherapy and possibly radiation, tisotumab vedotin is now an FDA approved drug for the management of recurrent cervical cancer. Another important aspect is the use of a new medication that targets a receptor called TROP2. TROP2 is a new target that we have drugs for, and there are active clinical trials in this space.