Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in Cellular Metabolism and Regulatory Genes in Oral Cancer

Abstract

Oral cancer is the thirteenth most common cancer globally with 300,373 new cancer newlinecases estimated annually, as per Globocan 2012. In India, oral cancer is the most common cancer in males with an incidence of 53,842 and fifth most common cancer in females with an incidence of 23,161, contributing 26% of the global oral cancer burden. The major risk factors for oral newlinecancer are tobacco, areca nut, alcohol and high risk human papillomavirus (HPV) 16/18; with an attributable risk of oral cancer being 85% for tobacco, 50% for areca nut, 19% for alcohol and 20% for HPV 16/18. However, small proportions (5-10%) of individuals with high risk lifestyle newlinehabits develop oral cancer. Thus, differences in genomic constitution of an individual play a newlinecritical role in oral cancer susceptibility. The differences in the genomic constitution represented newlineas inherent genomic variants- single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) influences individual s susceptibility to oral cancer. On the other hand, genomic instability through somatic mutations newlinepromotes tumorigenesis and tumor progression. These somatic mutations may alter protein function affecting critical biological processes leading to oral cancer. The genomic variants represented as SNPs account for about 90% of total variation in the human genome, and thus may enable identification of individuals with increased/decreased risk to oral cancer. A study by Saranath and co-workers, using high throughput microarray analysis indicated 93 SNPs with p-values ranging from 9.3 x 10-4 to 1.3 x 10-5 and an Odds Ratio of 2.18- 8.48, associated with 70 genes with critical biological functions. Several SNPs were present on newlineannotated genes, and fourteen representative SNPs critical in cancer progression and metastasis were analysed in the current study. The aim of the proposed study was to identify SNPs in genes associated with cell metabolism and protein regulation indicative of risk to oral cancer. newline