Survival Scripts & Code

Oral tongue squamous cell carcinomas (OTSCC) are a homogenous group of head and neck tumors characterized with aggressive behavior among younger patients. In this report, we have analysed genetic variants, expression and DNA methylation changes across 50 oral tongue primary tumors along with the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection status in those tumors to identify factors associat ed with disease free survival. Our data identified somatic mutations in the genes NOTCH2, TP53 and LOH in 11p, to be significantly associated with better disease free survival in HPV positive patients (P = 0.0254), but not in HPV negative patients (P = 0.414). We validated the latter using patients without HPV infection from TCGA (P = 0.369, N = 17 for TCGA_OralTongue; P = 0.472, N = 67 for all TCGA_HNSCC patients). Integrated analysis linked survival with apoptosis and aberrant methylation in SLC38A8 (P = 0.0129).