CAN BIOMARKERS PLAY A ROLE IN THE DECISION ABOUT TREATMENT OF THE CLINICALLY NEGATIVE NECK IN PATIENTS WITH HEAD AND NECK CANCER?

Abstract: For most patients with head and neck squamous cell cancer, a treatment decision concerning the neck is required. Since detection of small metastases in lymph nodes is difficult, many of the patients with no detectable metastases receive elective treatment of the neck. Additional information on the met-astatic potential of the primary tumor before treatment may be useful to reduce the number of these elective procedures. Bio-markers may supply such information. Molecules involved in several pathways have been studied, but the complexity of the metastatic process makes it unlikely that a single marker for me-tastasis can de identified. Techniques allowing the study of many factors simultaneously seem to be the most promising ones. In recent years, microarray expression profiling and com-parative genomic hybridization studies have yielded interesting results. If these results can be confirmed in larger studies, they may play a role in future clinical decision making on treatment o