Head and neck cancer collectively is one of the most common cancer types in the world. Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the most common subtype of head and neck cancer. SRSF3 is a protooncogene and is overexpressed in patients with OSCC. However, the relationship between SRSF3 expression and the clinical outcomes of patients with head and neck cancer remains unclear. By using the cBio-Portal for Cancer Genomics, a public online tool originally developed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY, USA), it was revealed that patients with head and neck cancer with an underexpression of SRSF3 showed better overall and disease-/progression-free survival rates. Moreover, 227 genes were found to be significantly coexpressed with SRSF3 in head and neck cancer. Then, in combination with the analysis of a previous splice-array dataset that included significantly changed genes after the silencing of SRSF3, four potential target genes of SRSF3 were identified. RBMX and HNRNPL were further confirmed to be target genes of SRSF3. Moreover, the underexpression of RBMX was determined to be significantly associated with a favorable overall survival rate among patients, while patients with an underexpression of both SRSF3 and RBMX is a subgroup of individuals with better prognoses than all other patients. These results suggest that the underexpression of SRSF3 and that of its target RBMX can be used as potential biomarkers to predict favorable overall survival among head and neck cancer patients. Keywords; head and neck cancer, RBMX, SRSF3 Materials and Methods Cell culture and RNA interference CAL 27 cells were grown in Dulbecco's modified Eagle medium (DMEM) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS; Gibco Laboratories, Gaithersburg, MD, USA) and 1% antibiotic-antimycotic solution (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA). Separately, SCC-9 cells were cultured in a mixed medium of DMEM and Ham's F12 medium (1:1) supplemented with 10% FBS and 1% antibiotic-antimycotic solution and 400 ng/mL of hydrocortisone. Human SRSF3 small interfering RNA (siRNA) was synthesized by GenePharma (Shanghai, China). Cells were transfected with 20 nM of siRNA using lipofectamine 3,000 reagent (Invitrogen) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Forty-eight h later, cells underwent a second transfection and, 96 h after that, total protein and RNA samples were collected. The sequences of siRNAs used in this study are as follows: 5' AGAGCUAGAUGGAAGAACA 3' (SRSF3) and 5' ACUCUAUCUG-CACGCUGAC 3' (nonspecific; NS). Plasmid and transfection The T7-tagged SRSF3 expression plasmid (T7-SRSF3) was kindly provided by Dr. Zheng Zhi-Ming (National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA). CAL 27 or SCC-9 cells were transfected with plasmid using lipofectamine 3,000 reagent according to the manufacturer's instructions. Western blot Total protein samples were loaded onto 10% sodium dodecyl sulfatepolyacrylamide gel electrophoresis gel and transferred to a nitrocellulose membrane. The membrane was blocked by 5% nonfat milk and analyzed by the followi...