Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC) accounts for 24% of all head and neck cancers and is a major cause of cancer death worldwide. Cause of death is mainly due to disease recurrence. Even with histologically normal surgical margins, 10-30% of OSCC patients will still have local recurrence. Researchers at University Health Network used a multi-step procedure including meta-analysis of published microarray datasets and a whole-genome expression profiling experiment to develop a robust 4-gene prognostic signature for OSCC. This novel gene signature is based on genes found to be over-expressed in tumors as compared to normal tissues and the majority of histologically normal surgical resection margins.

In an independent cohort of 30 patients, all patients who experienced recurrence in the validation set are in the high risk group, therefore, our gene signature has a high predictive value. This four-gene signature was validated by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) with predictive of recurrence (HR=6.8, p=0.04).

Over-expression of this 4-gene signature in tumour margins provides an early indication of genetic changes before histological alterations can even be detected by histopathological examination.

File Number: 1-00735 

Web site: http://www.uhnresearch.ca/tdc

Disease: Cancer

Other Information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/artic...