Molecular signatures of metastasis in head and neck cancer

Background: Metastases are the primary cause of cancer treatment failure and death, yet metastatic mechanisms remain incompletely understood.

Methods: We studied the molecular basis of head and neck cancer metastasis by transcriptionally profiling 70 samples from 27 patients-matching normal adjacent tissue, primary tumor, and cervical lymph node metastases.

Results: We identified tumor-associated expression signatures common to both primary tumors and metastases. Use of matching metastases revealed an additional 46 dysregulated genes associated solely with head and neck cancer metastasis. However, despite being metastasis-specific in our sample set, these 46 genes are concordant with genes previously discovered in primary tumors that metastasized.

Conclusions: Although our data and related studies show that most of the metastatic potential appears to be inherent to the primary tumor, they are also consistent with the notion that a limited number of additional clonal changes are necessary to yield the final metastatic cell(s), albeit in a variable temporal order.