A gene-expression signature of primary tumours from patients with head and neck squamous-cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is better at detecting the presence of lymph-node metastases than the current diagnostic procedure. This study is the first to independently validate a primary tumour expression signature that can reliably detect the presence of metastases in local lymph nodes, and might offer patients better therapeutic options.
To identify a predictive gene-expression signature for lymph-node metastases, Frank Holstege and colleagues analysed 82 primary HNSCC tumours, 45 from patients whose tumours were known to be metastatic and 37 from patients known to be lymph-node negative (N0). Genes expressed differentially in at least 30 samples were selected (1,986 genes) and used to build a predictor. A supervised classification approach was applied to establish a classifier without bias towards the training set, and 102 genes were found to be optimal in predicting the presence or absence of lymph-node metastases.
