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Candidate Methylation Biomarkers for Head and Neck Cancer by Infinium MethylationEPIC BeadChip

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the 7th most frequent malignancy in the world, with over 650, 000 new cases diagnosed each year. Although the overall survival of patients with oral cancer has improved during the past 20 years, 5-year survival is still very low, around 60%. It is known that the main risk factors associated with this carcinoma are excessive tobacco and alcohol consumption together with high-risk types of human papillomavirus (HPV). Still, there is a strong need to find new biomarkers of this disease. The most appropriate biomarkers would be those that would point out changes in epithelial cells before carcinoma occurence. Epigenetic biomarkers, such as methylated genes could point to changes even before they can be clinically detected. Altered DNA methylation is one of the possible factors associated with the HNSCC development. The model on which we explore changes in DNA methylation are normal oral mucosa tissue and HNSCC tissue. Herein, we are examining gene methylation status in HNSCC cells in relation to normal oral mucosa. We performed the Infinium MethylationEPIC BeadChip test on 16 head and neck samples (6 healthy oral mucosa and 10 head and neck cancer). All samples were also tested on mucosal HPV presence ; all normal mucosa samples and five HNSCC samples were HPV-negative, while five HNSCC samples were HPV-positive. Our preliminary results point out possible methylation biomarkers, particularly 21 genes significantly methylated in HNSCC in comparison to normal oral mucosa.

head neck cancer, methylation, biomarker

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