Predict head and neck cancer metastasis

In his doctoral thesis, Paul Roepman describes a gene expression profile that indicates whether or not a head and neck tumor has metastasized.

This offers possibilities to improve the diagnosis and treatment of patients with head and neck cancer. Roepman studied a total of over 20,000 genes in more than one hundred tumors. These measurements resulted in a gene expression profile made up of more than one hundred genes, which improves the accuracy of the diagnosis of neck lymph node metastases by more than 20 percent. Roepman also found that the gene activity in the primary tumor and in the metastases were the same. This means that the genes involved are important to developing therapies both for the primary tumor and for the metastases.

Paul Roepman received his PhD from Utrecht University on December 8.The title of his thesis is, “Gene expression analysis for assessment of lymph node metastasis in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.”