[Update on HPV-associated head and neck cancer-highlights from the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting].

At this year's Annual Meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the keyword search "HPV-associated head and neck cancer" resulted in 920 hits-74% of the hits on human papillomavirus (HPV). This underlines the relevance of the topic. The spectrum ranged from validation and separation of the prognostic groups of patients with HPV-associated oropharyngeal carcinoma (OPSCC) according to TNM 8, to the characterization of new tumor markers and tumor mutational burden for possible de-escalation strategies to avoid toxicity of standard multimodal treatments. It has been shown that the separation of p16-positive OPSCC into Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) stages I and II with the current TNM 8 classification without further markers is not sufficiently successful to justify de-escalation strategies. Following publication of the results of the De-ESCALaTE- and RTOG-1016 trials in 2018, which confirm the current standard of care for p16-positive OPSCC, no further phase III studies on de-escalation were presented. In a presented prospective phase II study (NCT02281955), the radiotherapy dose was reduced to cumulative 60 Gy, whereby the simultaneous chemotherapy regimen with cisplatin 30 mg/m