SQUAMOUS CELL CARCINOMA

Background: Head and Neck Squamous cell carcinoma is the sixth most common cancer globally with increasing frequency in developing countries. Despite huge advancement in surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy there is a little changed in the overall survival rate for patient with HNSCC over the past few decades. Due to its late diagnosis and lack of availability of reliable biomarker for this disease, its incidence is still on rise. Aims &Objectives: This study was aimed to study the expression of miR-21 in the tumor genesis of HNSCC. The objective of the study is to analyze the expression profile of miR-21 in HNSCC, to study the miRNA expression profile of miR-21 between control and tumor samples, to study the expression profile of miR-21 benign tumors and different categories of HNSCC Tumors on the basis of Histological Differentiation, gender-based Comparison of Benign and Malignant HNSCC Tumors, age-based Comparison of Benign and Malignant HNSCC Tumors, tumor Sitebased Comparison of Benign and Malignant HNSCC Tumors. Study Design: Case-control study. Study Setting: The University of Lahore. Period: June -2014 June -2105. Materials & Methods: In this research, 43 Formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissue samples (31 malignant HNSCC samples and 12 benign tumors from the same region) of both genders and aged 15-80 years were included in this study. 31 cases were malignant tumors were further consisted of 14 well-, 11 moderately- and 6 poorly differentiated tumors. Total RNA was extracted using PureLink FFPE RNA Isolation Kit and Two-Step RT-PCR was performed. TaqMan primer/ probe sets were used for the target miRNA- 221, while RNUB6 was the normalization control.By calculating __Ct and fold change difference according to Livak method. late onset disease the Relative quantification was done to determine the level of expression of miRNA-221. Tumor site did not show any effect on miR-21 expression levels. Results: Our results showed that the malignant samples have higher expression level of miR-21 then benign control samples. Significantly higher expression was observed in moderately and poorly categories of HNSCC. Gender-based expression showed that females had higher level of expression, while it was found that its expression is high in late onset disease. Tumor site did not show any effect on miR-21 expression levels. Conclusion: Our miRNA expression profile provides a potential strategy for finding new head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) molecular targets. miR-21 could be regarded as potential diagnostic marker in HNSCC.