HPV Biomarkers in Head and Neck Cancer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evaluation of Keratin K15 as a biomarker for human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16) driven head and neck squamous cell carcinomas.
IRAS ID
229535
Contact name
Ahmad Waseem
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Queen Mary University of London
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 4 months, 31 days
Research summary
Evaluation of K15 in detecting HPV-driven Head and Neck Cancer
Unlike most other cancers the number of new Head and Neck Cancers (HNSCCs) diagnosed each year continues to rise in the UK. This trend has been linked to the increasing prominence of human papillomavirus (HPV) as a causative agent. Fortunately, these 'HPV-driven' HNSCCs respond much better to treatment than HNSCCs caused by other factors such as tobacco and alcohol. Therefore, it is imperative that HPV-driven HNSCCs are identified so those patients can undergo less intensive and invasive cancer treatment which results in less life-changing side-effects. This personalisation of treatment will also permit the most efficient utilisation of limited NHS resources.
Our laboratory has developed a simple, reliable and cost-effective technique for identification of HPV-driven HNSCCs using a new biomarker called K15. The current methods for HPV detection are either (1) complex, time-consuming and expensive and, or (2) limited in accuracy as they only detect the presence of HPV in the patient and not its specific activity in their cancer. To date, we have extremely encouraging data from testing K15 on human cancer cells grown in our lab but it’s value in patients still needs to be confirmed. For this we need to collect 200 cancer tissue samples, taken at the time of surgery, which are entirely surplus to requirements for each patients treatment so their care will not be affected in any way. Each sample will then be pseudo-anonymised and tested for HPV in our lab by both the currently available techniques and K15 to directly compare the outcomes. We anticipate this study will take 3 years to complete and result in a simpler, cheaper and more reliable method for detecting HPV-driven HNSCCs.REC name
East of England - Cambridge South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/EE/0061
Date of REC Opinion
27 Mar 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion