Abstract 1513: ALDH1 and podoplanin expression in oral leukoplakia: Correlate with malignant transformaion risk

Abstract Oral leukoplakia (OL) is the clinically diagnosed preneoplastic lesion in the oral cavity with an increased oral cancer risk. However, the risk of malignant transformation of OL is still difficult to assess. The objective of this study was to examine the expression patterns of ALDH1 and Podoplanin (PD) and determine their role in predicting oral cancer development in patients with OL. In a retrospective follow-up study, the expression patterns of ALDH1 and PD were determined using immunohistochemistry in samples from 79 patients with OL, including patients with untransformed lesions (n = 42) and patients with malignant transformed lesions (n = 37). The association between protein expression patterns and clinicopathologic parameters including oral cancer free survival (OCFS) was analyzed during a mean follow up period of 3.5 years. ALDH1 and PD expression was observed in 48 (61%) and 53 (67%) patients respectively. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that the expression of ALDH1 and PD was correlated with the risk of progression to oral cancer (P = < 0.05). Multivariate analysis revealed that ALDH1 and PD expression was associated with 3.02 folds and 2.62 folds of increase risk of malignant transformation, respectively. Meanwhile, the malignant transformation risk of OL was considerably higher in cases with both ALDH1 and PD expression (P = 0.000). Taken together, our data indicated that ALDH1 and PD expression patterns in OL were associated with oral cancer development, suggesting that ALDH1 and PD could be useful biomarkers to identify OL patient with substantially high oral cancer risk. Citation Format: Umma Habiba, Masanobu Shindoh. ALDH1 and podoplanin expression in oral leukoplakia: Correlate with malignant transformaion risk. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 1513. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-1513