Molecular Basis and Rationale for the Use of Targeted Agents and Immunotherapy in Sinonasal Cancers

Abstract

Despite the progress of surgery, radiotherapy, and neoadjuvant chemotherapy, the prognosis for advanced sinonasal cancers (SNCs) remains poor. In the era of precision medicine, more research has been conducted on the molecular pathways and recurrent mutations of SNCs, with the aim of understanding carcinogenesis, helping with diagnosis, identifying prognostic factors, and finding potentially targetable mutations. In the treatment of SNC, immunotherapy is rarely used, and no targeted therapies have been approved, partly because these tumors are usually excluded from major clinical trials. Data on the efficacy of targeted agents and immune checkpoint inhibitors are scarce. Despite those issues, a tumor-agnostic treatment approach based on targeted drugs against a detected genetic mutation is growing in several settings and cancer subtypes, and could also be proposed for SNCs. Our work aims to provide an overview of the main molecular pathways altered in the different epithelial subtypes of sinonasal and skull base tumors, focusing on the possible actionable mutations for which potential target therapies are already approved in other cancer types.