Cell-cycle gene expression analysis using real time PCR in locally advanced squamous-cell head and neck cancer

Abstract

Purpose: The analysis of gene expression, especially those involved in cell cycle control, can help to discover mechanisms determining the outcome of radiation treatment. The main purpose of this study was to examine the expression level of genes responsible for cell cycle regulation in samples of the head and neck cancer, obtained during surgery.

Methods: Postsurgical samples of SCC of head and neck region were collected. Over 80 genes were analysed using cell cycle quantitative real-time RT-PCR Array method. Presence of 14 high-risk HPV types DNA in frozen or paraffin-embedded tumour pathological samples was also assessed. To correlate gene expression with selected pathological features and clinical outcome we used different hierarchical clustering method.

Results: Hierarchical clustering demonstrated the association between gene expression within certain clusters and gender, tumour site, T stage, N stage, grade, pathological subtype or tumour recurrence.

Conclusions: Despite some limitations we were able to identify gene clusters that allowed to classify patients according to selected clinical features and occurrence of tumour recurrence. The results of the analysis also confirm that the incidence of HPV infection among the patients from Upper Silesia is relatively low, whereas HPV negative tumours, likely associated with smoking, appeared dominant.

Keywords: Cell cycle genes; Head and neck cancer; Quantitative real-time PCR.