OBJECTIVE: Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a common cancer represented by nearly 80% oral cavity (OC) and oropharyngeal cancers (OPCs). Seventy percent of OPCs are associated with the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). Immunotherapy holds the promise of future improvements in treating HNC patients. The study objective was to determine whether durvalumab immunotherapy alone, prior to curative surgery, would significantly impact the oral salivary microbiome in a pilot cohort of HPV negative and positive OC and OPC patients. METHODS: Early stage OPC patients with squamous cell carcinoma were recruited: 5 HPV+ and 12 HPV-, and treated with two or three administrations of durvalumab given every two weeks, prior to surgery. Unstimulated saliva was collected and processed for bacterial DNA Isolation and V1-V3 16S rRNA gene next generation sequencing, taxa identification, and determination of relative abundance at four time points: baseline prior to surgery (A) and weekly durvalumab treatment timepoints (B, C, and D). Alpha- and beta-diversity differences for the time series were determined in Primer RESULTS: Longitudinal microbiome data across four timepoints (A, B, C, D) were obtained (HPV+: n = 18 samples
HPV-: n = 46 samples). A total of 416 taxa were detected across all time points, ranging from 336 to 373 per group. There were no differences in CONCLUSIONS: The results are consistent with findings from previous studies investigating HNC patients treated with chemoradiotherapy. More research is needed to understand possible impact of immunotherapy on opportunistic bacterial species, although negligible impact from durvalumab treatment on salivary microbiome was observed.