The Case Western Reserve-led research team will analyze computerized images of tissue samples for patterns which could become “biomarkers,” or predictors, for determining relative risk for recurrence in one particularly common type of head and neck cancers.
Those tumors, known as oropharyngeal cancers, occur primarily at the base of the tongue and in the tonsils.
Currently, however, oncologists tend to treat all of these tumors with the same aggressive level of therapy. This is the case even though many of the oropharyngeal tumors which are caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV) tend to have favorable outcome-regardless of treatment-while another subset of the tumors progress and metastasize, or spread.
