Nasopharyngeal cancer: new frontiers from the laboratory to the clinic.

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a unique malignant epithelial carcinoma of the head-and-neck region, with unique viral biology and geographic distributions in the world. Significant advances have been made in the clinical therapies for NPC, with novel techniques for radiation delivery and randomized trials demonstrating the survival advantage of concurrent chemotherapy for patients with locally advanced diseases. At the same time, there has been an improved understanding of the molecular dysregulations underpinning this disease, with recent discoveries emerging from the use of high-throughput technologies, including microarray expression profiling and robotic screens of chemical libraries. Signaling pathways related to cell renewal, proliferation, and apoptosis are important cascades, which could offer potentially novel strategies to develop targeted therapies, with the ultimate aim to improve outcome for future patients with NPC.