In patients with locally advanced oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), due to the large tumor burden and neck lymph node metastasis, comprehensive treatment is recommended, including surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and others. Pre-operative inductive therapy can reduce tumor volume, increase organ retention rate, and reduce distant metastasis rate. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptor in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is over-expressed and associated with disease invasion and poor prognosis. The use of targeted therapy against VEGF can not only inhibit tumor neovascularization, but also make the effectiveness of chemotherapeutic agents. VEGF and VEGFR are closely related to immune escape. Tumor growth requires new blood vessels to supply nutrients and oxygen, and VEGF can stimulate neovascularization. However, tumor neovascularization is often abnormal and distorted, which prevents immune active substances from reaching the tumor site. After tumor hypoxia, high expression of VEGF will induce tumor cells to express programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1), which further leads to immune escape. Targeted drugs against angiogenesis can relieve immunosuppression to a certain extent, and theoretically have a synergistic effect with anti-PD-1 immunotherapy. The innovation of this study is the combination of immune checkpoint inhibitor, Camrelizumab, and targeted drug against VEGFR, Apatinib, as an inductive therapy to treat the patients with locally advanced OSCC, followed with radical surgery and post-operative radiotherapy/chemoradiotherapy, the major pathologic response and safety will be evaluated as the primary surrogate endpoints, the 2-year survival rate and local recurrence rate will be the second endpoints.
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Major pathologic response
Timeframe: One year