Sloane Furniss
Kelsey Laboratory
Harvard School of Public Health
Human
Papillomavirus is well established as a causal agent for cervical cancer.
There are over 90 types of HPV with a subset of these causing cervical cancer,
so called "high risk" strains. Recent evidence suggests that a
subset of oral cancers is also positive for high risk HPV types, implicating
this virus as a cause of oral cancer. My research has focused on detecting
and typing HPV in squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck through
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and subsequent restriction fragment length
polymorphism. As viral integration is a hallmark of carcinogenic progression
in cervical cancer, I have also looked for integration of HPV in oral cancers.
A PCR-based integration assay has shown that the majority of HPV positive
oral cancers, like cervical cancers, contain integrated virus. My future
research will include determining the integration sites for HPV in oral
cancers and looking for a correlation between methylation of specific tumor
suppressor genes and HPV presence, as virus integration often leads to aberrant
methylation.