Gene expression profiling in HPV-infected oropharyngeal head and neck cancer

ABSTRACT: The prognosis of HPV-positive squamous oropharyngeal carcinomas (OPCs) is more favorable than that of HPV-negative OPCs. However, the prognosis of some of these tumors is dismal and to date validated survival predictors are missing in clinical practice. We designed a study on HPV-positive OPCs to determine whether a previously published gene expression tumor classification model,defined through meta-analysis of publicly available datasets (PMCID: PMC6721309), is able to predict survival in an external patient cohort. The 3 gene expression clusters were tested in a validation set of 286 cases and in a refined study population of 235 patients and in both confirmed their prognostic value. Five-year OS was 95% in the low risk cluster Cl1, 80% in the intermediate risk cluster (HR=5.74, p=.0057), and 66% in the high risk cluster (HR=9.28, p=.001). Functional/biological cluster characterization identified potentially targetable pathways in the high risk cluster. This prognostic stratification might be useful for clinical decision making and for planning future trials based on molecular tumor features.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE163173 | GEO | 2021/11/03

REPOSITORIES: GEO