Regional lymph node metastasis is a critical event in oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC) progression. The identification of biomarkers associated with the metastatic process would provide critical prognostic information to facilitate clinical decision making for improved management of OTSCC patients. Global expressional profiles were obtained for 25 primary OTSCCs, where 11 cases showed lymph node metastasis (pN+) histologically and 14 cases were nonmetastatic (pN-). Seven of pN+ cases also exhibited extracapsular spread (ECS) of metastatic nodes. Multiple expression indices were used to generate signature gene sets for pN+/- and ECS+/- cases. Selected genes from signature gene sets were validated using quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The classification powers of these genes were then evaluated using a logistic model, receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, and leave-one-out cross-validation. qRT-PCR validation data showed that differences at RNA levels are either statistically significant (P < .05) or suggestive (P < .1) for six of eight genes tested (BMP2, CTTN, EEF1A1, GTSE1, MMP9, and EGFR) for pN+/- cases, and for five of eight genes tested (BMP2, CTTN, EEF1A1, MMP9, and EGFR) for ECS+/- cases. Logistic models with specific combinations of genes (CTTN+MMP9+EGFR for pN and CTTN+EEF1A1+MMP9 for ECS) achieved perfect specificity and sensitivity. Leave-one-out cross-validation showed overall accuracy rates of 85% for both pN and ECS prediction models. Our results demonstrated that the pN and the ECS of OTSCCs can be predicted by gene expression analyses of primary tumors.

Most human cancers are characterized by genetic instabilities. Chromosomal aberrations include segments of allelic imbalance identifiable by loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at polymorphic loci, which may be used to implicate regions harboring tumor suppressor genes. Here we performed whole genome LOH profiling on over 40 human head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cell lines. Several frequent LOH regions have been identified on chromosomal arms 3p, 4p, 4q, 5q, 8p, 9p, 10p, 11q, and 17p. A genomic region of ∼7 Mb located at 8p22-p21.3 exhibits the most frequent LOH (87.9%), which suggested that this region harbors important tumor suppressor gene(s). Mitochondrial tumor suppressor gene 1 (MTUS1) is a recently identified candidate tumor suppressor gene that resides in this region. Consistent down-regulation in expression was observed in HNSCC for MTUS1 as measured by real-time quantitative RT-PCR. Sequence analysis of MTUS1 gene in HNSCC revealed several important sequence variants in the exon regions of this gene. Thus, our results suggested that MTUS1 is one of the candidate tumor suppressor gene(s) reside in 8p22-p21.3 for HNSCC. The identification of these candidate genes will facilitate the understanding of tumorigenesis of HNSCC. Further studies are needed to functionally evaluate those candidate genes.

No abstract