Dr. Roi Dagan Works to Improve Head and Neck Cancer Patient Outcomes

What research projects are you working on right now?
Our current research efforts are focused on reducing treatment side effects and improving quality of life among survivors of head and neck cancer. With our collaborators at UF Health/Shands in Gainesville and Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, we have an active clinical trial, which uses circulating tumor-tissue modified Human Papillomavirus-DNA levels (ctHPV-DNA) as a predictive biomarker to individualize decreased radiation and chemotherapy doses for patients with favorable prognosis HPV-associated throat cancers. We also have active projects evaluating outcomes of patients with head and neck and eye cancers treated with proton beam therapy.

What project would you like to work on next?
Building on prior successful projects, we will continue to explore our treatment de-intensification strategies in favorable prognosis head and neck cancers. We are also developing pre-op chemo-immunotherapy strategies combined with proton or photon-beam radiotherapy for managing advanced head and neck cancers with the goal of improving outcomes from the current standard of upfront surgery following beam risk-adaptive radiation or chemo-radiation.

What keeps you moving forward?
Our patients, caretakers and their loved ones keep me motivated to push through the challenges of caring for patients with life-threatening cancers, and I could not imagine doing this with a more dedicated team than the UF Health Proton Therapy Institute staff.