Deregulation of miRNA expression may contribute to tumorigenesis and other patho-physiology associated with cancer. Using TLDA, expression of 762 miRNAs was checked in 18 pairs of gingivo buccal cancer-adjacent control tissues. Expression of significantly deregulated miRNAs was further validated in cancer and examined in two types of precancer (leukoplakia and lichen planus) tissues by primer-specific TaqMan assays. Biological implications of these miRNAs were assessed bioinformatically. Expression of hsa-miR-1293, hsa-miR-31, hsa-miR-31* and hsa-miR-7 were significantly up-regulated and those of hsa-miR-206, hsa-miR-204 and hsa-miR-133a were significantly down-regulated in all cancer samples. Expression of only hsa-miR-31 was significantly up-regulated in leukoplakia but none in lichen planus samples. Analysis of expression heterogeneity divided 18 cancer samples into clusters of 13 and 5 samples and revealed that expression of 30 miRNAs (including the above-mentioned 7 miRNAs), was significantly deregulated in the cluster of 13 samples. From database mining and pathway analysis it was observed that these miRNAs can significantly target many of the genes present in different cancer related pathways such as “proteoglycans in cancer”, PI3K-AKT etc. which play important roles in expression of different molecular features of cancer. Expression of hsa-miR-31 was significantly up-regulated in both cancer and leukoplakia tissues and, thus, may be one of the molecular markers of leukoplakia which may progress to gingivo-buccal cancer.

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