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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 "For most patients, the chemoradiation was very effective. But a subset of patients still do not do well. Our next step was to look at the biomarkers to see if we could determine which patients were responding to treatment, based on tumor biology," said Carey, who is also an associate chair and professor of otolaryngology and pharmacology at the U-M Medical School.
The researchers found that 64 percent of the tumors were positive for high-risk strains of HPV. Almost all of the HPV-positive tumors responded to initial chemotherapy, and 78 percent of those patients survived with their organs intact. Of the HPV-negative patients, only four of 15 survived. In addition, patients with the EGFR marker had worse outcomes.
"The combination of markers was an important indicator. Patients whose tumors expressed high levels of EGFR did poorly. But those who had high EGFR and were also HPV-positive had some protection. Patients with high EGFR and low HPV fared the worst," Bhavna Kumar, a research laboratory specialist who was lead author on both papers, said in a prepared statement.
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The U-M team also found that patients with low expression of protein called p53 and high expression of a protein called BCLXL also had poor outcomes.
More information
The American Cancer Society has more about oral and oropharyngeal cancers.
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-- Robert Preidt
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