Grant: O.G: STBBI Res.: Beyond HIV/AIDS/Hep. C- STBBI other than HIV/hep. C (general)

Human Papilloma virus (HPV) is one of the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in Canada as well as worldwide. It can spread from men to women, women to women and men to men through anal, vaginal and oral sex. While 90% of the people who get the HPV infection clear it within the first two years of infection, rest of them have persistent HPV infection. A subset of those people with persistent HPV infection eventually develops Oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC), cervical cancer and anogenital cancers depending on the anatomical site affected. The proposed research focuses on OPSCC and focuses on understanding how the small subset of patients with persistent HPV infection develop OPSCC? There are two possibilities: 1) The patients could carry genetic mutations before HPV infection that gives advantage for the HPV to have persistent infection and turn the cell into malignant tumor. 2) On the other hand, the persistent HPV infection could cause genome instability eventually leading to a mutation in a driver gene resulting in malignant tumor. Currently our understanding about this phenomenon is limited and there are no models available to test it. Using cutting edge CRISPR technology and inducible cancer models, the proposed research aims to address this question. Understanding the link between persistent HPV infection and malignant transformation of cells into OPSCC tumor would better guide us in developing effective preventive strategies or treatments for this STI driven cancer.