In a paper published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, Barbara Burtness, MD, and colleagues report that specific DNA methylation sites that predict outcome for patients with head and neck cancer can be measured in peripheral blood before and after radiotherapy.
Between December 2013 and September 2018, 115 patients participated in the study. Peripheral blood samples from patients with non-metastatic HNSCC were obtained for methylation analysis one week before and one month after radiotherapy.
“We successfully trained and validated a signature of DNA methylation in peripheral blood before and after radiotherapy that stratified outcomes among patients with HNSCC, implicating the potential for genomics-tailored surveillance and consolidation treatment,” the authors wrote. Read the abstract here.
David C. Qian, Bryan C. Ulrich, Gang Peng, Hongyu Zhao, Karen N. Conneely, Andrew H. Miller, Deborah W. Bruner, Ronald C. Eldridge, Evanthia C. Wommack, Kristin A. Higgins, Dong M. Shin, Nabil F. Saba, Alicia K. Smith, Barbara Burtness, Henry S. Park, William A. Stokes, Jonathan J. Beitler, Canhua Xiao. Outcomes stratification of head and neck cancer using pre- and post-treatment DNA methylation from peripheral blood. International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics. 2022.