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Our results suggest a public health message that low frequency of cigarette consumption contributes to the development of HNC. However, smoking duration seems to play at least an equal or a stronger role in the development of HNC.

Head and neck cancer remains a morbid and often fatal disease and at the present time few effective molecular markers have been identified. The purpose of the present work was to identify new molecular markers for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). We applied methylation-sensitive arbitrarily primed PCR (MS/AP-PCR) to isolate sequences differentially methylated in HNSCC. The most frequently hypermethylated fragment we found maps close to a cytosine guanine dinucleotide (CpG) island on chromosome 9q33.2, and hypermethylation of this CpG island was associated with transcriptional silencing of an alternative transcript of the LHX6 gene. Using combined bisulfite restriction analysis (CO-BRA), hypermethylation of this fragment was detected in 13 of 14 (92.8%) HNSCC cell lines studied and 21 of 32 (65.6%) primary tumors, whereas little or no methylation was seen in 10 normal oral mucosa samples. We extended this investigation to other cancer cell lines and methylation was found in those derived from colon, breast, leukemia and lung, and methylation was also found in 12/14 primary colon tumors. These findings suggest that differentially methylated (DIME)-6 hypermethylation is a good cancer marker in HNSCC as well as in other kinds of neoplasias and confirm the importance of searching for markers of epigenetic dysregulation in cancer.

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BackgroundThe development and progression of cancer depend on its genetic characteristics as well as on the interactions with its microenvironment. Understanding these interactions may contribute to diagnostic and prognostic evaluations and to the development of new cancer therapies. Aiming to investigate potential mechanisms by which the tumor microenvironment might contribute to a cancer phenotype, we evaluated soluble paracrine factors produced by stromal and neoplastic cells which may influence proliferation and gene and protein expression.MethodsThe study was carried out on the epithelial cancer cell line (Hep-2) and fibroblasts isolated from a primary oral cancer. We combined a conditioned-medium technique with subtraction hybridization approach, quantitative PCR and proteomics, in order to evaluate gene and protein expression influenced by soluble paracrine factors produced by stromal and neoplastic cells.ResultsWe observed that conditioned medium from fibroblast cultures (FCM) inhibited proliferation and induced apoptosis in Hep-2 cells. In neoplastic cells, 41 genes and 5 proteins exhibited changes in expression levels in response to FCM and, in fibroblasts, 17 genes and 2 proteins showed down-regulation in response to conditioned medium from Hep-2 cells (HCM). Nine genes were selected and the expression results of 6 down-regulated genes (ARID4A, CALR, GNB2L1, RNF10, SQSTM1, USP9X) were validated by real time PCR.ConclusionsA significant and common denominator in the results was the potential induction of signaling changes associated with immune or inflammatory response in the absence of a specific protein.