Project Grant R01DE034740

The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research awarded the Regents of the University of Michigan $652,280 on September 1, 2026, under the Oral Diseases and Disorders Research program (CFDA 93.121) to advance understanding of HPV integration events in oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC).

The funded research develops novel sequencing and informatics approaches to characterize how human papillomavirus integrates into tumor genomes in HPV-positive OPSCC patients. The work includes developing a targeted capture sequencing-based HPV integration caller and assembler to evaluate spatial heterogeneity of HPV integration events within tumors, expanding searchPV informatics capability to detect HPV-host integrations from circulating tumor DNA sequencing data, and analyzing HPV-host fusion transcripts from individual integration events using short- and long-read transcriptome sequencing and single-cell spatial RNA sequencing. The research objective is to establish the prognostic value of HPV-host integration events for future clinical trials, ultimately improving identification of patients at increased risk of treatment failure in OPSCC.

Performance occurs at Ann Arbor, Michigan, with a period of performance extending from September 1, 2026, through July 31, 2031. The award is classified as a Project Grant, the assistance type under which NIDCR supports basic, translational, and clinical research in dental, oral, and craniofacial health and disease.