Transcriptomic Analysis of PBMCs in Oral and Orophayngeal Cancer Patients

Objectives: We hypothesized whether oral and oropharyngeal cancer’s secretion affected peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) expression levels. Therefore, the aim of this study was to characterize transcriptions change in PBMCs of both cancers.
Methods: RNA was isolated from PBMCs of eight oral and oropharyngeal cancer patients and four healthy controls to perform next-generation RNA Sequencing. After analysis, we validated some prominent genes by quantitative real-time PCR in PBMCs of 15 healthy controls, 15 oral cancer patients and 15 oropharyngeal cancer patients.
Results: The RNA sequencing data displayed 205 up-regulated genes and 46 down-regulated genes in both cancer’s PBMCs significantly (P<0.001). A remarkable gene x showed expression level in healthy controls, oral cancer patients and oropharyngeal cancer patients as 1.25 ± 0.09, 2.22±0.19 and 2.23 ± 0.29, respectively. Expression level of this gene were significantly different between control group and both cancer groups (P<0.001). Regarding to diagnostic purpose, this expression marker demonstrated very high percentages of sensitivity and specificity to distinguish both cancers out of healthy controls
Conclusions: Our preliminary study exhibited some different transcripts in PBMCs of oral and oropharyngeal cancer compare to healthy controls. Moreover, expression level of gene X may use as oral and oropharyngeal cancer screening. However, further studies with enlarge sample sizes are needed to confirm this findings.