Mass Common Brigham’s HPV-DeepSeek check allows a lot earlier most cancers detection by means of a blood pattern, creating a brand new alternative for screening HPV-related head and neck cancers.
Human papillomavirus (HPV) is chargeable for about 70% of head and neck cancers in the US, making it the commonest kind of most cancers linked to the virus. Charges of those cancers proceed to rise every year. In contrast to HPV-related cervical cancers, which have established screening choices, there’s at present no check to detect HPV-associated head and neck cancers.
Because of this, most instances are identified solely after tumors have already expanded to billions of cells, inflicting signs and sometimes spreading to close by lymph nodes. Creating screening instruments that may determine these cancers a lot earlier would enable sufferers to start remedy sooner and enhance outcomes.
Detecting most cancers years earlier than signs
In a newly funded federal research revealed within the Journal of the Nationwide Most cancers Institute, researchers at Mass Common Brigham demonstrated that their liquid biopsy check, referred to as HPV-DeepSeek, can detect HPV-related head and neck cancers as early as 10 years earlier than signs develop. In accordance with the research’s authors, diagnosing these cancers earlier might improve remedy success charges and cut back the necessity for aggressive therapies.
“Our research exhibits for the primary time that we will precisely detect HPV-associated cancers in asymptomatic people a few years earlier than they’re ever identified with most cancers,” mentioned lead research creator Daniel L. Faden, MD, FACS, a head and neck surgical oncologist and principal investigator within the Mike Toth Head and Neck Most cancers Analysis Heart at Mass Eye and Ear, a member of the Mass Common Brigham healthcare system.
“By the point sufferers enter our clinics with signs from the most cancers, they require remedies that trigger vital, life-long unwanted effects. We hope instruments like HPV-DeepSeek will enable us to catch these cancers at their very earliest levels, which finally can enhance affected person outcomes and high quality of life.”
How HPV-DeepSeek works
HPV-DeepSeek depends on whole-genome sequencing to determine tiny fragments of HPV DNA that separate from tumors and flow into within the blood. Earlier research by the identical analysis group demonstrated that the check might attain 99% specificity and 99% sensitivity in diagnosing most cancers at a affected person’s preliminary clinic go to, performing higher than current diagnostic approaches.
To find out whether or not HPV-DeepSeek might detect HPV-associated head and neck most cancers lengthy earlier than analysis, researchers examined 56 samples from the Mass Common Brigham Biobank: 28 from people who went on to develop HPV-associated head and neck most cancers years later, and 28 from wholesome controls.
HPV-DeepSeek detected HPV tumor DNA in 22 out of 28 blood samples from sufferers who later developed the most cancers, whereas all 28 management samples examined unfavorable, indicating that the check is very particular. The check was higher in a position to detect HPV DNA in blood samples that have been collected nearer to the time of the sufferers’ analysis, and the earliest optimistic consequence was for a blood pattern collected 7.8 years previous to analysis.
Utilizing machine studying, the researchers have been in a position to enhance the check’s energy in order that it precisely recognized 27 out of 28 most cancers instances, together with samples collected as much as 10 years previous to analysis.
The authors are actually validating these findings in a second blinded research funded by the Nationwide Institutes of Well being (NIH) utilizing tons of of samples collected as a part of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Most cancers Screening Trial (PLCO) on the Nationwide Most cancers Institute.
Reference: “Circulating tumor human papillomavirus DNA entire genome sequencing allows human papillomavirus-associated oropharynx most cancers early detection” by Dipon Das, Shun Hirayama, Ling Aye, Michael E Bryan, Saskia Naegele, Brian Zhao, Vasileios Efthymiou, Julia Mendel, Adam S Fisch, Zoe Guan, Lea Kröller, Birgitta E Michels, Tim Waterboer, Jeremy D Richmon, Viktor Adalsteinsson, Michael S Lawrence, Matthew G Crowson, A John Iafrate and Daniel L Faden, 10 September 2025, JNCI: Journal of the Nationwide Most cancers Institute.
DOI: 10.1093/jnci/djaf249
Funding for this work got here from the Nationwide Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Analysis (NIDCR) of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being (NIH), grant no. R03DE030550.
Faden receives wage help from NIH/NIDCR K23 DE029811, NIH/NIDCR R03 DE030550 and NIH/NCI R21 CA267152. He has additionally obtained analysis funding or in-kind funding from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Calico, Predicine, BostonGene, Neogenomics and Haystack (Quest), along with consulting charges from Merck, Noetic, Chrysalis Biomedical Advisors, Neogenomics, Arcadia, and Focus. None of those sources relate to the work on this manuscript. Waterboer serves on advisory boards for Merck (MSD) Sharp & Dohme. The remaining authors have declared no conflicts of curiosity.
