Cervical Cancers Escaping HPV Screening: Decoding HPV-Independent Carcinogenesis through Multi-Omics Profiling

Objetivo

Cervical cancer prevention assumes that most cases are caused by persistent infection with high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV). Yet 7 to 10 percent of invasive cervical cancers are HPV-negative, making them invisible to HPV-based screening and unaffected by vaccination; these cancers are often detected late and have worse outcomes.

This project will define the biology of HPV-independent cervical cancer and enable improved detection. I will lead a Nordic collaboration to assemble, to our knowledge, the largest rigorously confirmed cohort of HPV-negative cancers with matched HPV-positive controls, link them to nationwide registries, and apply an integrated multi-omics strategy (whole-exome DNA sequencing, RNA sequencing, and DNA methylation profiling) to map genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic trajectories. Crucially, I will test the hit-and-run hypothesis by reanalyzing earlier screening samples from the same women retrieved from national biobanks. From these data, I will develop and validate clinically actionable biomarkers with a clear path to implementation, and pilot their integration into confirmatory testing and national screening audits.

The outcome will be a population-based molecular taxonomy of HPV-independent cervical cancer and a route to earlier detection for women whose cancers escape the HPV paradigm, directly supporting the World Health Organization’s cervical cancer elimination strategy and strengthening European screening practice.

Ámbito científico (EuroSciVoc)

Este proyecto aún no se ha clasificado con EuroSciVoc.
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