Do oncogenic driver mutations cause squamous cell cancers?

Saptaparna Pal, Amity University Kolkata

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma are one of the most common neoplasias in the world. Most head and neck squamous cell carcinoma are treated as advanced disease and the multidisciplinary treatment strategies include radiotherapy (RT), chemotherapy (CT), surgery, and selected therapy. The addition of cetuximab, an IgGI chimeric monoclonal antibody against the epidermal growth factor receptor,  concomitant with RT was explored, resulting in overall survival and progression-free survival which leads to the aim of improving the clinical benefit. NGS is used to identify genetic alterations that could be used as a target optimization and molecular vulnerability for therapeutic discovery. Inductive chemotherapy improves organ preservation and survival can be alternative chemotherapy (CTRT). Universal comparison of the mutational status and tumour characteristics such as grade and histology, the location didn’t show much difference. However, women were linked with a lower percentage of mutation than a man in our cohort.

Most of the head and neck cancers are treated at an advanced stage, the identification of biomarkers of response is the main goal to optimize diagnosis and reduce side effects. It was statistically observed that a significantly lower percentage of mutation TP53 in HPV-positive oropharyngeal tumours (71.4)% than in HPV negative (30.8)% had been previously reported in HNSCC. Human papillomavirus (HPV) the oropharyngeal tumour shows higher OS compared to HPV negative. Patients having mutations in the selected genes had a better OS than patients having mutated tumors. AKT/P13K/mTOR has been reported as the frequently mutated pathway in HNSCC regardless of the HPV status. Lastly, there was a lack of association between response and mutational status after treatment. This states that, excluding genetically driven druggable targets,  HNSCC mutational profile is not associated with any clinical response but is a matter of mutational burden as per reports.

Also read: Assessing the Changing Treatment Landscape in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer !

Reference: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72927-2

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