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[Preprint]. 2025 Feb 22:2025.02.17.25322399.
doi: 10.1101/2025.02.17.25322399.

VOYAGER: an international consortium investigating the role of human papilloma virus and genetics in oral and oropharyngeal cancer risk and survival

M Gormley  1   2   3 , A Adhikari  3 , T Dudding  1   2 , M Pring  2   3 , K Hurley  3 , G J Macfarlane  4 , P Lagiou  5 , A Lagiou  6 , J Polesel  7 , A Agudo  8 , L Alemany  9   10 , W Ahrens  11 , C M Healy  12 , D I Conway  13 , C Canova  14 , I Holcatova  15 , L Richiardi  16 , A Znaor  17 , A F Olshan  18 , R J Hung  19   20 , G Liu  20   21 , S Bratman  22 , X Zhao  23 , J Holt  23 , R Cortez  24 , V Gaborieau  24 , J D McKay  24 , T Waterboer  25 , P Brennan  24 , N Hayes  23 , B Diergaarde  26 , S Virani  24
Affiliations

VOYAGER: an international consortium investigating the role of human papilloma virus and genetics in oral and oropharyngeal cancer risk and survival

M Gormley et al. medRxiv. .

Abstract

Head and neck cancer (HNC) is the sixth most common cancer globally. Incidence and survival rates vary significantly across geographic regions and tumor subsites. This is partly due to differences in risk factor exposure, which includes tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption and human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, alongside detection and treatment strategies. The VOYAGER (human papillomaVirus, Oral and oropharYngeal cAncer GEnomic Research) consortium is a collaboration between five large North American and European studies which generated data on 10,530 participants (7,233 cases and 3,297 controls). The primary goal of the collaboration was to improve understing of the role of HPV and genetic factors in oral cavity and oropharyngeal cancer risk and outcome. Demographic and clinical data collected by the five studies were harmonized, and HPV status was determined for the majority of cases. In addition, 999 tumors were sequenced to define somatic mutations. These activities generated a comprehensive biomedical resource that can be utilized to answer critical outsting research questions to help improve HNC prevention, early detection, treatment, and surveillance.

Keywords: Head and neck cancer; human papilloma virus; oral cancer; oropharyngeal cancer; risk factors; survival.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests Scott Bratman reports grants from AstraZeneca, personal fees and equity from Adela, patents licensed to Adela and Roche, and service on advisory board for EMD Serono. Where members are identified as personnel of the International Agency for Research on Cancer/ World Health Organization, the authors alone are responsible for the views expressed in this article and they do not necessarily represent the decisions, policy or views of the International Agency for Research on Cancer / World Health Organization.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Overview of the five studies included in VOYAGER.
Key: HPV, human papilloma virus; OPC, oropharyngeal cancer (green); OC, oral cancer (blue); Other sites (black). Created in BioRender. Gormley, M. (2025) https://BioRender.com/j07p735
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. a) Overall survival, b) progression-free survival, and c) disease-specific survival for oral and oropharyngeal cancer cases in VOYAGER.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.. Overlapping data available in VOYAGER. Genotyping data includes cases and controls, tumor sequencing samples are for oropharyngeal and oral cavity cases only and clinical data includes all available cases and controls
Created in BioRender. (2025) https://BioRender.com/h48b673
Figure 4.
Figure 4.. Viral host interactions suggest HLA loci that are specific for HPV16 viral proteins
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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