Prof Pamela Rabbitts talks about the Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine and the work she has been doing on lung cancer and head and neck cancer. These two cancers show a number of similarities but head and neck cancer is much more accessible for research, especially in the precancer stage. Prof Rabbitts discusses her particular interest in cancer genomics, talks about the difficulties collecting tissue samples from thoracotomies and explains the potential role of HPV in the stratification of head and neck cancer patients.