Molecular Determinants of Oral Cancer Detection

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the sixth most common cancer worldwide accounting for 4% of cancers in men and 2% of cancers in women. In the United States there are over 38,000 new cases of oral cancer each year. The overall 5-year survival rates for oral cancer have remained low at approximately 30-40% for the past decades and has remain among the worst of all cancer death rates. This is dispointing and points to the needs for new strategy for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of this disease. This proposal aims to harness the molecular determinants of oral SCC using genomic and expressional approaches on patient population that will permit the maximal utility of emerging technologies to identify concordant genomic and transcriptional determinants in oral cancer. The combined power of SNP array-based loss of heterozygosity (LOH) and copy number abnormalities (CNA) profiling (Aim 1) and the comprehensive differential expression profiling (Aim 2) will be utilized. The advantages of this type of synergistic approach are significant. For example, if the same gene shows DNA copy number abnormalities and altered expression, not only do we have independent validation of the profiling data but we will also have determined the mechanism of altered expression of that gene. Furthermore, that particular gene will be more likely to have biological significance. Bioinformatics tools and biocomputational expertise are in place to harness the consistent and concordant molecular determinants in the oral SCC (Aim 3). This proposal optimally utilizes existing patient resources and emerging technologies to harness consistent and concordant genomic and transcriptional determinants in oral SCC. This will serve as a pilot project and/or feasibility test for more extensive patient-based studies to identify and validate molecular biomarkers for early detection of oral/head and neck cancer.