Grant: Project Grant

Cancer in the head and neck region is one of the leading cancers in the world associated with a high mortality rate. There are also significant long-term, life-long, and sometimes progressive side effects of radiotherapy-based treatment. Currently, radiation with chemotherapy, or radical surgery followed by chemoradiation are still mainstays of treatment. However, many of these patients progress to fatal metastatic disease. Those who survive cancer pay a high price with many therapies related to side effects and diseases. More efficient therapeutic approaches are desperately required to improve survival of patients with this disease, while preserving the normal functioning of organs affected by the disease, or organs in the vicinity of the disease that also become subject of collateral, treatment related, injury. In our institution we have an innovative treatment for patients with advanced throat (oropharyngeal) cancer. They receive chemotherapy first followed by less invasive transoral (through-the mouth) robotic surgery, and less invasive neck surgery, while avoiding radiotherapy altogether. This approach not only helps minimize or avoid adverse long-term effects of treatment but may also lead to better survival compared to the conventional treatment. The proposed study will find molecular markers to identify the patients that can benefit most from this new therapy or a modification of it and allow a personalized therapeutic decision making for each patient. This study will put Canada in a unique position to affect a potential paradigm shifting change in the way we treat patients with advanced throat cancer.