Cases of human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers of the head and neck, known as head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), are rapidly increasing throughout the United States.

Unfortunately, relatively little is known about the factors that contribute to these tumours and what makes some tumours more aggressive and treatment-resistant than others.

To determine why some patients respond better to radiation therapy than others, researchers in UNC School of Medicine’s Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center formed a robust collaboration with researchers at Yale Cancer Center, the Yale Head and Neck Cancer Specialised Program of Research Excellence (SPORE), and the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN).

Together, they published a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which reveals that HPV+ head and neck cancers can be divided into two distinct subtypes that determine how well patients will respond to therapy, with one subtype being more responsive to radiation therapy.

Researchers also discovered a new mechanism of HPV carcinogenesis through the study which enhances growing efforts to personalise treatment for patients with HPV+ HNSCC.

“We're the first ones to describe these two subtypes,” said Wendell Yarbrough, MD, MMHC, FACS, the Thomas J. Dark Distinguished Professor of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, “Using this research, we can firmly identify two groups of patients and are able to associate their tumour subtype with treatment outcomes.”

Currently, many patients with HPV+ HNSCC are treated with high doses of radiation combined with chemotherapy.

But the side effects - which include muscle fibrosis, swallowing difficulties, and artery hardening - can last a lifetime.

Personalised therapy may allow oncologists to make better treatment choices for their patients; however, it can be difficult for doctors to determine the type and intensity of treatment without knowing how the patient’s tumour will respond to therapy.

To address this need, members of Yarbrough’s team, including Travis Schrank, MD, PhD, Natalia Isaeva, PhD, and Wesley Stepp, MD, PhD, who were also co-authors ion the paper, began coordinating a research cohort at UNC, grabbing publicly available data from the University of Chicago, and some validation data from E1308, a large national cooperative group clinical trial that was done through ECOG-ACRIN.

They then analysed the tumour samples and identified several groups of co-expressed genes.

Only one of these co-expressed gene sets separated tumours with high and low expression, and analysis of genes in this set found that they represented targets of a master transcription factor called NF-kB.

NF-kB plays important roles in inflammation and cell death and has been associated with the carcinogenesis of HNSCC.

Much to their surprise, researchers found the two distinct subtypes directly correlated with patient outcomes.

Tumours with low NF-kB activity were associated with worse prognosis, while tumours with high NF-kB activity were associated with a better prognosis.

The subtypes identified by high or low NF-kB activity were remarkably different from one another, from the genes that were mutated in the cancers, factors driving the mutations, the number of mutations per cancer, HPV gene expression, HPV integration, gene methylation, and infiltration of certain immune cells into the tumour.

“One of our very tenacious, intelligent residents, Wesley Stepp, who is a co-author in the paper, was really instrumental in organising that set of patients in the UNC cohort,” said Schrank.

“All of the organisations that collaborated on this research project were very willing to work with us.”

Patient survival was the most obvious, and important, distinction between the two types of tumours.

To get a better understanding of why one subtype may have better outcomes, researchers constructed cellular models of each subtype in the lab.

“Tumours with high NF-kB activity were more responsive to radiation therapy potentially contributing to improved patient survival,” said Yarbrough.

“We know that there's something about activating the NF-kB pathway that makes the tumours more sensitive to radiation therapy, which could explain how and why those patients are surviving better.”

Ultimately, this data could be used to identify patients whose therapy can be safely de-intensified in order to treat the tumour, lessen side effects, and enhance quality of life.

Now that researchers have more of an understanding of the new mechanism of HPV carcinogenesis, the findings may lead to the development of new, personalised treatments that are more efficient and have fewer side effects.

Source: University of North Carolina Health Care