WashU Medicine faculty and research members of Siteman Cancer Center, along with colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, have found that aggressive cancer cells can appear in different locations within head and neck tumors. The finding provides new clues as to why some such cancers — particularly squamous cell carcinomas not caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) — are more difficult to treat.
Senior author Sidharth Puram, MD, PhD, the Lindburg Professor of Otolaryngology and head of the Department of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery at WashU Medicine, and his colleagues identified two distinct spatial patterns, or locations, where aggressive cancer cells can occur, one of which was previously unknown.
Read more on the Inside WashU Medicine website.
