Emergence and Margins in Head and Neck Cancer: A new understanding

Cancer has been widely accepted as a genetic disease. This thesis challenges this assumption and proposes that cancer be considered as an emergent complex system. A new framework for carcinogenesis and cancer progression is presented. This framework is applied to identify biological markers with the potential to predict recurrence in oral cancer. A simple dual staining technique is developed to test the identified biomarkers. The results support the use of these biomarkers as a predictor of recurrence over and above traditionally measured cancer clearance.