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World J Stomatol. Nov 20, 2015; 4(4): 121-125
Published online Nov 20, 2015. doi: 10.5321/wjs.v4.i4.121
When will RNA-based tests similar to Oncotype DX be used for oral cancer?
Guy R Adami, Yalu Zhou, Antonia Kolokythas
Guy R Adami, Department of Oral Medicine and Oral Diagnostics, Center for Molecular Biology of Oral Diseases, College of Dentistry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612-7213, United States
Yalu Zhou, Arphion Ltd, Chicago, IL 60612, United States
Antonia Kolokythas, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, College of Dentistry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612-7213, United States
Author contributions: Adami GR, Zhou Y and Kolokythas A contributed to the writing of the manuscript; Zhou Y generated the table; Adami GR designed the aim of the manuscript.
Supported by Arphion Ltd. via an STTR grant from the National Science Foundation.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Guy R Adami, PhD, Department of Oral Medicine and Oral Diagnostics, Center for Molecular Biology of Oral Diseases, College of Dentistry, University of Illinois at Chicago, 801 South Paulina St, Chicago, IL 60612-7213, United States. gadami@uic.edu
Telephone: +1-312-9966251 Fax: +1-312-3552688
Received: June 26, 2015
Peer-review started: June 27, 2015
First decision: September 17, 2015
Revised: October 3, 2015
Accepted: November 10, 2015
Article in press: November 11, 2015
Published online: November 20, 2015
Abstract

Methods for detection, diagnosis and predicting treatment outcomes for oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) have not changed in decades. Information from studies about molecular changes that occur with these tumors are not useful in the clinic. This is in contrast to breast cancer where global gene expression analysis in the form of the Oncotype DX and Mammaprint tests are used routinely to determine ideal treatment for a large subset of breast tumors. While the first large scale studies of gene expression in both cancer types were done over a dozen years ago, research on OSCC has not led to gene expression profiles that are useful in the clinic. Global gene expression data for well over a thousand breast tumors linked to clinical outcomes has been available online for nearly ten years. This accelerated the development and validation of multiple RNA classifiers used to predict breast cancer treatment outcomes. Molecular characterization of oral and head and neck cancer research has been handicapped primarily due to low sample numbers. The recent release from The Cancer Genome Atlas of global gene expression analyses of over 500 head and neck tumors, including 308 oral tumor samples, obtained by standardized methods, along with linked clinical outcome data, should change this. It makes the vision of including gene expression analysis in OSCC treatment planning an obvious and attainable goal that could occur in the next five years.

Keywords: Treatment outcome, Oral squamous cell carcinoma, Gene expression classifier

Core tip: Methods for characterizing oral squamous cell carcinoma have not changed in decades. This is in contrast to breast cancer where global gene expression analysis is often used to determine ideal treatment. Studies focusing on molecular changes in oral cancer have suffered from lack of uniformity and small size. The recent release from The Cancer Genome Atlas of global gene expression analyses of over 500 head and neck tumors, including 308 oral tumors, should bring to the clinic in the next few years gene and gene expression analysis, and improved outcomes.