A new study suggests that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine inhibits pathways that drive resistance to the chemotherapy agent cisplatin in head and neck cancers and restores tumor-killing effects of cisplatin in animal models. The findings pave the way for a clinical trial that combines cisplatin and hydroxychloroquine to treat chemotherapy-resistant head and neck cancers. "When caring for patients with head and neck cancers, I often see chemotherapy fail. Cisplatin is a very important chemotherapy drug, but tumor resistance to cisplatin is a huge problem," said co-senior author Umamaheswar Duvvuri, M.D., Ph.D. "My lab is interested in understanding the mechanisms of...