Diagnostic Markers in the Head and Neck Malignancy

Oral cancer, the largest subset of head and neck cancer, has become one of the most lethal malignancies during the last two decades. Although several diagnostic tools have been applied for the early detection of oral malignancies, it is still urgent to identify novel tumor markers. Early detection would significantly decrease the mortality rate of oral cancer. Advances in understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) have resulted in an increasing number of biomarkers that can be used to predict the behavior of this disease. The authors conducted a review of studies examining the role of immunohistochemistry-based protein biomarkers in predicting OSCC outcome. Recently, numerous molecular markers such as cell surface markers, intracellular markers, markers of anomalous keratinization, oncogenes, tumor suppressor genes, and proliferative markers have been investigated.