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Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the head and neck originates from the mucosal lining of the upper aerodigestive tract, including the lip, tongue, nasopharynx, oropharynx, larynx and hypopharynx. In this review, we summarise what is currently known about the potential function of primary cilia in the pathogenesis of this disease. As primary cilia represent a key cellular structure for signal transduction and are related to cell proliferation, an understanding of their role in carcinogenesis is necessary for the design of new treatment approaches. Here, we introduce cilia-related signalling in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and its possible association with HNSCC tumorigenesis. From this point of view, PDGF, EGF, Wnt and Hh signalling are discussed as all these pathways were found to be dysregulated in HNSCC. Moreover, we review the clinical potential of small molecules affecting primary cilia signalling to target squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck area., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Putnová, Putnová, Hurník, Štembírek, Buchtová and Kolísková.)

Introduction: In the era of personalized medicine and treatment optimization, use of immune biomarkers holds promise for estimating the prognosis of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) undergoing definitive treatment., Methods: To evaluate the prognostic potential of immune biomarkers, we conducted a prospective monocentric cohort study with loco-regionally advanced HNSCC patients indicated for definitive radiotherapy/radiochemotherapy at the Department of Oncology, Ostrava University Hospital, Czech Republic, between June 2020 and August 2023. We focused on the expression of programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) relative to overall survival (OS) and specific survival rates. Associations between biomarkers and survival rates were assessed by crude and adjusted hazard ratios (cHR, aHR, respectively) obtained from Cox proportional hazards regression., Results: Among a total of 55 patients within a median follow-up of 19.7 months, there were 21 (38.2%) all-cause deaths and 15 (27.3%) cancer-related deaths. An overall survival (OS) rate of 61.8% and a disease-specific survival (DSS) rate of 72.7% were recorded. A significant association between survival rates and a ≥10% difference in PD-L1 expression on immune versus tumor cells (high PD-L1 IC expression) was documented regardless of the type of analysis (univariate or multivariate). In addition, a stronger association was confirmed for OS and the composite biomarker high PD-L1 IC expression along with either median-higher CD8+ TIL count or increased TIL density ≥30%, as indicated by an aHR of 0.08 (95% CI, 0.01 to 0.52) and 0.07 (95% CI, 0.01 to 0.46), respectively. Similar results were demonstrated for other specific survival rates., Discussion: The early outcomes of the present study suggest the utility of a strong prognostic factor involving a composite biomarker high PD-L1 IC expression along with increased TIL density in HNSCC patients undergoing definitive radiotherapy and radiochemotherapy., Trial Registration: The study is registered with Clinicaltrials.gov. - NCT05941676., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Blažek, Petráš, Hurník, Matoušek, Knybel, Čermáková, Štembírek, Cvek and Soumarová.)

Objective: Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) originates from the mucosal lining of the oral cavity. Almost half of newly diagnosed cases are classified as advanced stage IV disease, which makes resection difficult. In this study, we investigated the pathological features and mutation profiles of tumor margins in OSCC., Methods: We performed hierarchical clustering of principal components to identify distinct patterns of tumor growth and their association with patient prognosis. We also used next-generation sequencing to analyze somatic mutations in tumor and marginal tissue samples., Results: Our analyses uncovered that the grade of worst pattern of invasion (WPOI) is strongly associated with depth of invasion and patient survival in multivariable analysis. Mutations were primarily detected in the DNA isolated from tumors, but several mutations were also identified in marginal tissue. In total, we uncovered 29 mutated genes, mainly tumor suppressor genes involved in DNA repair including BRCA genes; however none of these mutations significantly correlated with a higher chance of relapse in our medium-size cohort. Some resection margins that appeared histologically normal harbored tumorigenic mutations in TP53 and CDKN2A genes., Conclusion: Even histologically normal margins may contain molecular alterations that are not detectable by conventional histopathological methods, but NCCN classification system still outperforms other methods in the prediction of the probability of disease relapse., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Hurník, Režnarová, Chyra, Motyka, Putnová, Čermáková, Blažek, Fománek, Gaykalova, Buchtová, Ševčíková and Štembírek.)