HEAD AND NECK ONCOLOGY
Oncogenesis in the upper respiratory tract concentrates on the assessment of p53 as clonal marker and the molecular biologic background of disturbed HLA expression in head and neck squamous cell cancer.
p53 mutations are detected using a PCR-mRNa based sequence based mutation analysis. In case of patients with multiple tumors, either in the upper respiratory tract, the lung or both, this technique differentiates between patients with multiple primary tumors and those with disseminated disease.
Unravelling the cellular pathophysiology that results in disturbed HLA expression gives insight into cellular processes involved in carcinogenesis and may find future application in selecting patients for immunotherapy.
PATHOLOGY - GENERAL ASPECTS
The department is involved in a lot of minor projects that are run together with the clinicians from the various UMC Utrecht departments. In most cases, these projects concern participation in clinical trials and other studies in which histopathologic evaluation plays an important role in either patient selection for treatment protocols or evaluation of the results for treatments given.