BACKGROUND The laminin (LN) gamma2 chain expression has been linked to tumor invasion and prognosis. To provide a convenient clinical use, procedures that analyze LNgamma2 expression by using the serum and/or urine of patients should be developed. METHODS The serum concentrations of the N-terminal fragments of the LNgamma2 chain in 73 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinomas were ...

Squamous cell carcinomas of the lung and of the head and neck district share strong association with smoking habits and are characterized by smoke-related genetic alterations. Driver mutations have been identified in small percentage of lung squamous cell carcinoma. In parallel, squamous head and neck tumors are classified according to the HPV positivity, thus identifying two different clinical...

Characterizing the epidemiology of head and neck cancers is challenging and has received limited attention in the medical literature. Traditionally, 80%-90% of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) have been attributed to tobacco and alcohol use, but with growing public awareness and tobacco control efforts over the past few decades, there has been a downward trend in smoking prevalen...

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) comprise a wide spectrum of neoplasms with different tumor biologies, prognosis and response to therapies. Current tumor classification and traditional diagnostic methods (e.g. clinical assessment, histopathology) are limited in their capacity to determine prognosis and clinical decision-making. Despite recent improvements in treatment, the outcome ...

Panels of prognostic biomarkers selected using candidate approaches often do not validate in independent populations, so additional strategies are needed to identify reliable classifiers. In this study, we used an arraybased approach to measure DNA methylation and applied a novel method for grouping CpG dinucleotides according to well-characterized genomic sequence features. A hypermethylation ...

HNSCC (head and neck squamous cell carcinoma) is the sixth most common neoplasm worldwide (Cripps et al., 2010). Approximately 600,000 new cases are reported each year (Cripps et al., 2010), and in the past 30 years recurrent and/ or metastatic HNSCC has had a poor prognosis (Forastiere et al., 2001; Khuri et al., 2000). More than 50% of newly diagnosed patients do not achieve complete remissio...

Although the prognostic role of human papillomavirus (HPV) in locoregionally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) is well established, its prognostic and/or predictive role in recurrent/metastatic settings remains to be defined. Despite epidemic growth of HPV-positive oropharyngeal carcinoma, a low recurrence rate in HPV-positive patients results in a small number of pa...

The phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling pathway is the most commonly mutated pathway in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). There are several drugs targeting members of the PI3K signaling pathway in development for HNSCC. In this article, we review the genetic alterations reported in the pathway pertinent to HNSCC, various agents in development targeting various mediators of t...

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the sixth leading cause of cancer worldwide. The treatment of choice in case of head and neck cancer is surgery, followed by chemo- or/and radiotherapy. A potentially effective instrument to improve the outcome of numerous diseases, including viral infections, diabetes and cancer, is RNA interference (RNAi). It has been demonstrated that small in...