Understanding the progression of a cancerous head and neck tumor, “how it started and how it evaded the immune system and got into the blood stream and spread provides a wealth of information we can utilize and gives us more treatment options,” said James Rocco, a head and neck cancer specialist and chair of the James Cancer Hospital’s Head and Neck Surgery Department. In this episode, Rocco discusses how he and his collaborators have developed a computational data analytics program called PhylogicNDT. The program will evaluate the progression of head and neck cancer tumors caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) and they believe “this approach can be applied to other types of cancers,” Rocco said. Diagnosing head and neck tumors in the early stages, when the tumor mutations are less complex and easier to treat, can be problematic. This is because the symptoms don’t usually appear until the tumor has progressed significantly. However, “looking at the circulating DNA in someone’s blood can detect head and neck cancer in the earliest stages,” Rocco said of this type of blood analysis. “We’re not there yet with circulating DNA but we’re getting close.”