Karin Nylander Lab

Squamous cell carcinoma in the mobile tongue is a serious disease affecting an increasing number of people preferably young (≤40 years) and mainly women. To increase our understanding of this disease and to develop more individualised treatment and follow up of patients we work with three main aims:

1. To understand why tongue cancer increases among young people.
2. To establish a panel of changes characteristic of clinically tumour free tongue contralateral to the tumour to use in diagnostic and prognostic work.
3. To use artificial intelligence, AI, to build a model to predict the risk of relapse for patients with tongue cancer.

Squamous cell carcinoma in the mobile tongue, SCCOT, is a serious disease affecting an increasing number of people worldwide, preferably young (≤40 years) and mainly women. Treatment today is basically the same for all patients despite the fact that tumours have different characteristics.

Three main aims

Our overall aim is to increase the understanding for this specific tumour type in order to offer more individualised treatment and follow up of the patients. We work with three main aims:

1. To understand why tongue cancer increases among young people, and clarify if certain genetic changes can be used to distinguish between young patients with good and bad prognosis.
2. To establish a panel of changes characteristic of clinically tumour free tongue contralateral to the tumour to use in diagnostic and prognostic work. We search for changes in clinically healthy tongue that early could give information about on going tumour development either of a new tumour or a relapse.
3. To use artificial intelligence, AI, to build a model to predict the risk of relapse for patients with tongue cancer by using the clincal and histological data available for all patients.