Project 458798

Head and neck cancer includes cancers of the mouth, tonsils, throat, and voice box. It can be caused by smoking and drinking, but also by infection with a virus called Human Papillomavirus (HPV). While smoking rates are declining in North America, HPV infections are rising, which has made this cancer type much more common. Head and neck cancer (HNC) related to HPV also tends to occur in younger patients, mostly in men in their 50s, and treatment can cause many side effects, including difficulty with swallowing, eating, and speaking. Interestingly, since these cancers are driven by HPV infection, they can release specific HPV-related materials that can be tracked in the body. The goal of my research project is to track the HPV-related materials released by cancer cells in saliva and blood, a technique known as liquid biopsy. The aim is to painlessly track how the cancer is growing or shrinking over time and with treatment. Because HPV-related material might be appearing in the blood and saliva under many different forms, my project focuses on finding out which factors affect our capacity to identify and interpret this marker of cancer evolution. More specifically, these materials may be broken up into smaller pieces, and this might affect our capacity of detection. The objective of my project is to develop ways to detect HPV-related material in blood and saliva samples derived from patients with HNC. This will help us find out what is happening to the cancer at a specific moment in time without having to do invasive scans or biopsies. Liquid biopsy is especially important in head and neck cancers as many patients can be "overtreated" to remove as much of the cancer as possible. While this lowers the risk of relapse, it can also leave patients with long-term side effects and disabilities. Determining cancer evolution from a blood sample would inform clinicians whether a patient need more treatment or not, and significantly decrease patients' long-term side effects.