Circulating tumor DNA in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma—current status and future prospects

Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the most common malignancy of the head and neck. Stagnating survival rates in recent decades, despite advances in the treatment paradigms, surveillance technologies, and multidisciplinary care, leave clinicians with a need for better options for screening, risk-stratifying, and monitoring patients. A growing proportion of patients with HPV-associated SCC have improved outcomes but continue to have a heterogenous response to treatment. Advances in the platforms and assays measuring circulating tumor DNA offer an opportunity to monitor disease status at the molecular level for both virally mediated and traditional risk-factor-driven SCC of the head and neck. This overview will discuss experimental, clinically used, and commercially available liquid biopsy platforms and their recent applications in patients with head and neck SCC malignancies.