prof. Wouter Huvenne (MD, PhD)

CRIG group leader
Wouter Huvenne


Head of department – Head and Neck Zurgery (UZ Gent)
Associate professor (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, UGent)

 

Research focus

- Intra-operative margin assessment: Surgical oncology relies adequate resection margins. This is of particular matter in the head and neck where ablative surgery results in both esthetic and functional morbidity. Intra-operative imaging techniques can assist the surgeon in order to achieve oncological sound margins while minimizing morbidity. 
- Tumor micro-environment: Tumor profiling and characterization is a necessary tool in order to individualize treatment, and more adequately predict outcome after treatment. Insight into the more detailed mechanisms of tumor aggressiveness will provide us with these data, which ultimately will define the treatment. 
- PSMA beyond the prostate: exploring prostate-specific membrane antigen as a target in the treatment of late-stage malignancies of the thyroid, liver and the head and neck: Patients with head and neck cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma or iodine refractory thyroid cancer have a poor prognosis, with a respective 5y overall survival of approximately 50%, 15% and 20 %. Patients can be confronted with severe complaints caused by therapy resulting in a detrimental impact on the quality of life. Moreover, adjuvant therapies are often insufficient to achieve cure or long-term remission when a patient is diagnosed with metastatic disease. There is thus a great need for new diagnostic and therapeutic interventions to improve these patients' survival and quality of life. The prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is heavily expressed on the membrane of most prostate cancers. Besides enabling improved imaging of prostate cancers using PET/CT, PSMA is used as a novel therapeutic target and targeting PSMA using the therapeutic radionuclide 177Lu has shown to increase survival in patients with metastatic prostatic cancers. However, the protein’s name was wrongly chosen, as PSMA is also expressed in the tumor-induced neovasculature of solid cancers. Significantly, PSMA expression in these solid cancers was associated with a worse prognosis. Consequentially, immunohistochemical demonstration of PSMA expression by the tumor and PSMA-directed imaging using PET/CT might enable a distinction between patients with high- and low-risk disease. We hypothesize that the destruction of these blood vessels with 177Lu-PSMA might increase survivalin these patients. Furthermore, because of the increased necrosis, PSMA-targeted radionuclide therapy might also increase the impact of other systemic therapies such as chemotherapy or immunotherapy. In conclusion, results from this project could enable a more individualized tumor-specific therapy with better survival for the patient.

 

Research team

Key publications

  • High-dose reirradiation with intensity-modulated radiotherapy for recurrent head-and-neck cancer: disease control, survival and toxicity. Radiother Oncol. 2014 Jun;111(3):388-92. doi: 10.1016/j.radonc.2014.04.018. Epub 2014 Jul 3.
  • Long-term outcome of 18 F-fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography-guided dose painting for head and neck cancer: Matched case-control study. Head Neck. 2017 Nov;39(11):2264-2275. doi: 10.1002/hed.24892. Epub 2017 Aug 21.
  • Upfront vs. no upfront neck dissection in primary head and neck cancer radio(chemo)therapy: Tumor control and late toxicity. Radiother Oncol. 2017 Aug;124(2):220-224. doi: 10.1016/j.radonc.2017.07.011. Epub 2017 Jul 26.
  • Turning the tide: Clinical utility of PD-L1 expression in squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. Oral Oncol. 2017 Jul;70:34-42. doi: 10.1016/j.oraloncology.2017.05.002. Epub 2017 May 19. Review.
  • Open surgery versus primary radiotherapy in T4b sinonasal carcinoma. (2018) B-ENT. 14(2). p.93-99
  • Very late xerostomia, dysphagia, and neck fibrosis after head and neck radiotherapy. Head Neck. 2019 Oct;41(10):3594-3603. doi: 10.1002/hed.25880. Epub 2019 Jul 22.
  • Functional Outcomes and Complications After Salvage Total Laryngectomy for Residual, Recurrent, and Second Primary Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Larynx and Hypopharynx: A Multicenter Retrospective Cohort Study. Frontiers in Oncology. 2020 Sep 2;10:1390. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2020.01390. Peer reviewed - Impact factor 4.848
  • Oncologic Outcomes After Salvage Laryngectomy for Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Larynx and Hypopharynx: A Multicenter Retrospective Cohort Study. Annals of Surgical Oncology. 2020 Aug 28. doi: 10.1245/s10434-020-09017-0. Peer reviewed - Impact Factor 4.061
  • The Prognostic Value of CD206 in Solid Malignancies: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Cancers 2021, 13, 3422. https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers13143422 - Impact Factor 6.639
  • High-Resolution 18F-FDG PET/CT for Assessing Three-Dimensional Intraoperative Margins Status in Malignancies of the Head and Neck, a Proof-of-Concept. J. Clin. Med. 2021, 10, 3737. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10163737 - Impact Factor 3.303
  • Direct co-registration of [18F]FDG uptake and histopathology in surgically excised malignancies of the head and neck: a feasibility study. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2023 Jun;50(7):2127-2139. doi: 10.1007/s00259-023-06153-z. Epub 2023 Mar 1. Impact Factor 10.057
     

Contact & links

Tags

Biomarker discovery
imaging-guided surgery
head & neck cancer