—Screening Process Established for Identifying Patients Likely to Benefit from Dacomitinib

A Yonsei Medical School research team led by Professors Cho Byoung-chul and Kim Hye-ryun has demonstrated the clinical efficacy of the experimental cancer drug dacomitinib on certain patients suffering from recurrent and/or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (R/M-SCCHN). At the same time, they have established a screening process to help determine which R/M-SCCHN patients will likely benefit from being treated with dacomitinib.

The research was sponsored by the Ministry of Future Creative Science and the Korea Research Foundation, and it was conducted in collaboration with counterparts from the Korea Cancer Treatment Hematology and Oncology Research Center and the JEUK Institute for Cancer Research. The results were published November 25, 2014 in the online version of Clinical Cancer Research under the title “Phase II Clinical and Exploratory Biomarker Study of Dacomitinib in Patients with Recurrent and/or Metastatic Squamous Cell Carcinoma of Head and Neck.”