Head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) ranks among the top ten
most prevalent cancers in the United States. Despite its prevalence,
little is known about how this cancer develops and spreads. However, in a paper
to be published in the January, 2015 edition of Nature, researchers
offer critical new information about head and neck cancers.
An
increasing number of head and neck cancers are caused by a virus, the
human papilloma virus (HPV). Using tissue from HPV-positive and
HPV-negative (largely linked to smoking) HNSCC tumors, researchers from
institutions around the country referenced The Cancer Genome Atlas to
develop a comprehensive assessment of alterations, or oncogenes, that
could play a role in how the tumors develop and metastasize, said
Wendell Yarbrough, M.D., section chief of otolaryngology at Yale School
of Medicine and Clinical Program Leader of the Head & Neck Cancer
Program at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven.
“To make the
progress we envision with personalized medicine, we first have to
understand what’s driving these tumors, and this is one of the first
studies to do this,” said Yarbrough, an author on the study. “We found
some characteristics we’d never seen before in these tumors that
ultimately could help us pair the most effective new drugs with patients
most likely to respond.”
Notable among the findings is the fact
that the defects in tumors varied broadly across patients, with tumors
of some non-smokers or low-smokers resembling those of smokers. The
study also uncovered the presence of the Her2 gene amplification, known
to play a critical role in breast cancer.
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