Heads Up
The head and neck cancer research charity
HNC Research
Towards better, individually-tailored therapies for head and neck cancer (HNC) patients
In the Head and Neck Cancer Cell Signalling Group, which is based at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in immediate proximity to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, we are looking at human cancers of the head and neck from a new angle. We aim to understand the differences of individual tumours on the levels of the molecular HNC cell machinery, which is composed of DNA, RNA, proteins and metabolites. Our focus is on cancer-driving proteins, which are prominent targets of newly emerging cancer drugs.
Up to now, treatments of HNC patients in the UK rely to a very large degree on surgery and radiotherapy. While it is possible to obtain fantastic results with these techniques in some cases, not all patients can be cured yet and some others experience very significant unwanted side effects. Chemotherapy, which is very successful in some other cancer types, currently plays a minor role in HNC therapies, as no highly effective treatment modalities have emerged to date.
Surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which are currently the main pillars on which clinical most clinical cancer therapies rest, have recently gotten company from a newly emerging concept: molecularly targeted therapies.
While these are still in their infancy, it is hoped that they will make a major dent into cancer death curves over the next decades. Molecularly targeted therapies require a much closer look than previously established treatment methods into the unique modalities that a patient tumour has.
While this was nearly impossible only a decade ago, recent advances in molecular techniques allow now the in-depth study of molecular defects in individual cancers. This has led to a much more comprehensive picture and some striking revelations. For example, a patients’ tumour may have easily 50 to 100 molecular defects, but only a handful of these may actually be shared between tumours of two individual patients.
That means that highly effective molecularly targeted therapies may have to rely in many cases on specific cocktails of drugs, which are individually tailored for each patient to match his tumours’ specific characteristics.
The vast majority of studies aiming to find new drugs and drug combinations to date depends on tumour cell lines that have been established from patient biopsies. In the past, many studies have looked at only a handful or even as little as one such cell line and tried to draw conclusions about the drug sensitivity of a specific tumour type. With all the new information about molecular tumour defects at hand, we have now come to realise now that this is insufficient, and in some cases even completely inappropriate. Instead it is necessary to look at cancer cells derived from many different tumours to gain an understanding about the different subtypes of a tumour.
The scarcity of biopsy material from an individual patient for repeated biochemical and biological in-depth studies still requires, however, that such studies still largely rely on cell line panels. Head and neck cancers are an ideal cancer type in this respect, since it is relatively easy to generate permanent cell lines from patient tumours.
Relying on the generosity of collaborators from the US, Finland, the UK, Japan and Germany we have been able to gather a large collection of HNC cell lines. These provide a unique resource for our studies. In addition, working closely with Oxford-based surgeons, we gather considerable numbers of HNC tumour biopsies, which will enable us to ask in the future more focussed follow-up mechanistic questions that emerge from the cell line panel-based analyses.
Up to now, treatments of HNC patients in the UK rely to a very large degree on surgery and radiotherapy. While it is possible to obtain fantastic results with these techniques in some cases, not all patients can be cured yet and some others experience very significant unwanted side effects. Chemotherapy, which is very successful in some other cancer types, currently plays a minor role in HNC therapies, as no highly effective treatment modalities have emerged to date.
Surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which are currently the main pillars on which clinical most clinical cancer therapies rest, have recently gotten company from a newly emerging concept: molecularly targeted therapies.
While these are still in their infancy, it is hoped that they will make a major dent into cancer death curves over the next decades. Molecularly targeted therapies require a much closer look than previously established treatment methods into the unique modalities that a patient tumour has.
While this was nearly impossible only a decade ago, recent advances in molecular techniques allow now the in-
The vast majority of studies aiming to find new drugs and drug combinations to date depends on tumour cell lines that have been established from patient biopsies. In the past, many studies have looked at only a handful or even as little as one such cell line and tried to draw conclusions about the drug sensitivity of a specific tumour type. With all the new information about molecular tumour defects at hand, we have now come to realise now that this is insufficient, and in some cases even completely inappropriate. Instead it is necessary to look at cancer cells derived from many different tumours to gain an understanding about the different subtypes of a tumour.
The scarcity of biopsy material from an individual patient for repeated biochemical and biological in-
Relying on the generosity of collaborators from the US, Finland, the UK, Japan and Germany we have been able to gather a large collection of HNC cell lines. These provide a unique resource for our studies. In addition, working closely with Oxford-
Below, as examples, two investigators from our group with their projects are featured:
Much of our research, which is costly, but we think essential, has only become possible through the core funding granted to us from the cancer charity Heads Up and we would like to express our gratitude for their continuing support.
Stephan Feller
Principal Scientist
Heads-
© 2008 Heads Up