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Introduction: Metabolic reprogramming is a hallmark of cancer. Plasma metabolomics offers a minimally invasive approach for identifying metabolic alterations that may provide insights into tumor progression.

Objectives: We aimed to characterize plasma metabolomic profiles in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and evaluate their clinical relevance.

Methods: Plasma samples from 43 OSCC patients and 129 cancer-free controls, matched at a 1:3 ratio based on age, sex, and body mass index, were analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). A random forest algorithm was applied to identify key metabolic features distinguishing OSCC from controls. The clinical significance of the top metabolites was assessed and validated in another OSCC cohort (n = 27).

Results: A total of 113 compounds were putatively annotated and analyzed based on relative abundances. A ten-feature panel demonstrated good classification performance (area under the curve = 0.87; Matthews correlation coefficient = 0.703). The ten features are maltose, glucose, xylulose, δ-gluconolactone, fructose, indoleacetic acid, α-hydroxybutyric acid, glutamic acid, cysteine, and the monoacylglyceride MG(18:1(9Z)/0:0/0:0), suggesting dysregulated carbohydrate metabolism and oxidative stress as the major plasma metabolomic alterations in OSCC. Notably, α-hydroxybutyric acid levels were elevated in patients with regional lymph node metastasis compared with those without.

Conclusion: Our findings underscore the intricate interplay between altered glucose metabolism, redox imbalance, and OSCC. α-hydroxybutyric acid, a marker of oxidative stress and an indicator of insulin resistance, may be associated with metastatic progression.

In this study, we aimed to evaluate the prognostic significance of collagens in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Plasma proteomics data from 40 OSCC patients and 33 healthy controls, generated using the Olink Explore 3072 platform, along with microarray gene expression data from 29 OSCC tumours, 21 clinically normal tissues contralateral to tumour (NTCT), and 14 healthy controls, were analysed to assess expression levels of collagens and their associations with clinicopathological variables and survival outcomes. Eleven collagen peptides were detected in plasma. Higher circulating levels of collagen type III alpha 1 chain (COL3A1) propeptides were associated with improved overall survival and longer disease-free time (p < 0.05). Penalised Cox regression using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) supported COL3A1 propeptide as a survival-associated feature. Comparison of protein profiles between COL3A1-low and COL3A1-high patients identified neutrophil degranulation as the most significantly enriched pathway. Microarray differential expression analysis showed COL3A1 mRNA to be significantly upregulated in tumour tissues compared with NTCT and healthy controls (FDR < 0.05). Circulating COL3A1 propeptide shows potential as a prognostic biomarker for OSCC and may reflect systemic immune-related alterations.

Background: The incidence of squamous cell carcinoma of the oral tongue (SCCOT) among young adults is increasing in several regions of the world. Age-dependent differences in the biology of SCCOT have been suspected.

Methods: We used the Olink Explore 3072 high-throughput platform to comprehensively quantify plasma proteins in 24 young (≤ 40 years of age) and 50 old (> 50 years of age) individuals. Eight young and 20 old individuals were diagnosed with SCCOT, four young and nine old individuals with SCC at other oral subsites (SCCOO), and the remaining 12 young and 21 old individuals were healthy controls. Dimension reduction analysis, differential expression analysis, and functional enrichment analysis were performed to characterize young patient-specific biological signatures.

Results: Plasma levels of 2923 proteins were obtained. Principal component analysis indicated age-related expression patterns. Comparing young patients to young controls/old patients/old controls, differential abundance analysis showed that increases in protein levels of Peroxiredoxin 2 (PRDX2) and C-C motif chemokine ligand 26 (CCL26) and a decrease in Kallikrein related peptidase 4 (KLK4) were young patient-specific. Reactome pathway enrichment analysis identified “Cellular response to chemical stress,” “Detoxification of reactive oxygen species” and “Cellular responses to stimuli” as the top altered pathways in young patients with SCCOT.

Conclusions: Abnormal cellular stress and aberrant immune regulation could thus be linked to cancer development in young patients. The unique plasma proteomic signature observed in young patients with SCCOT suggests that they constitute a specific group with distinct underlying pathophysiological processes.

Squamous cell carcinoma of the oral tongue (SCCOT) represents an aggressive malignancy characterized by high metastatic potential and significant heterogeneity in its tumor microenvironment. The tumor-stroma ratio (TSR) has emerged as a prognostic biomarker, with higher stromal content frequently correlating with worse survival outcomes. Traditional approaches using the standard 50% TSR cutoff may not be optimal for SCCOT, and visual TSR estimation introduces variability during TSR region annotation. This study aimed to develop and validate a dedicated TSR estimation model for SCCOT by incorporating representative TSR regions from the invasive tumor front of whole slide images and to determine the optimal TSR threshold for prognostic stratification. Using hematoxylin and eosin-stained images from The Cancer Genome Atlas as a discovery cohort and whole slide images from Norrland's University Hospital Umea, Sweden (NUS) as a validation cohort, we developed a computational model to estimate TSR. The model demonstrated a high correlation with pathologist-based TSR estimation in both discovery (R = 0.848, p < 0.01) and validation (R = 0.783, p < 0.01) cohorts. The optimal 55% cutoff identified by the model improved prognostic accuracy over the traditional 50% threshold, with patients having high stroma within the tumor invasive front showing worse overall (log-rank p = 0.006) and disease-specific (log-rank p = 0.016) survival. Our computational TSR model for SCCOT demonstrates that automated TSR estimation enhances prognostic accuracy at an optimal cutoff of 55%, contributing to more precise risk stratification and potentially enabling personalized treatment strategies in SCCOT management.

Background: Bilateral salivary gland tumors, both benign and malignant and synchronous or metachronous are very rare.

Case presentation: Here three cases of synchronous bilateral salivary gland tumors are described and discussed. Recognizing the entity is important for diagnostics and treatment planning. The first patient was a 56-year-old female with a bilateral parotid tumor, a malignant tumor, salivary duct carcinoma on the right side and a benign tumor, pleomorphic adenoma on the left side. The second patient was a 50-year old female with a bilateral benign parotid tumor, a pleomorphic adenoma. The third patient was a 51-year old female with a bilateral malignant tumor, an acinic cell carcinoma. Details on the diagnostic work-up, histopathology and treatment are described and discussed.

Conclusions: In the case of a unilateral salivary gland tumor, especially of the major glands, the contralateral gland is always included in the clinical and radiological (MRI) head and neck evaluation prior to surgery, to detect or exclude possible bilateral occurrence.