Better understanding of head and neck tumor causes and progression could help doctors improve personalized treatment for cancer patients.

“How it started and how it evaded the immune system and got into the blood stream provides a wealth of information we can utilize, and gives us more treatment options,” says James Rocco, MD, PhD, a head and neck cancer specialist and chair of the head and neck surgery department at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute.

Rocco and his collaborators have developed a computational data analytics program called PhylogicNDT, which will evaluate the progression of head and neck cancer tumors caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), and they believe “the approach can be applied to other types of cancers,” according to Rocco.