Introduction: Oral mucositis (OM) remains a significant, highly symptomatic, disruptive side effect of radiation and concomitant chemoradiation therapy used for the treatment of squamous cell cancers of the head and neck. Despite its clinical and economic burden, implementation of an effective intervention has been elusive.
Areas covered: Increased understanding of the complexity of the biological basis for its pathogenesis has yielded potential druggable targets such as the mitigation of superoxide formation and oxidative stress. Avasopasem manganese is a selective superoxide dismutase mimetic being developed by Galera Therapeutics, which recently submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the FDA for a severe OM indication. This review describes the preclinical and clinical studies which led to, and supported the NDA, and assesses the potential utility of avasopasem clinically.
Expert opinion: Avasopasem manganese appears to effectively mitigate severe OM associated with concomitant chemoradiation used in the treatment of head and neck cancers, as well as cisplatin-associated renal toxicity in the absence of impairing tumor response.
Keywords: Oral mucositis; avasopasem manganese; chemoradiation; clinical development; head and neck cancer; radiation.