Immunochemical staining predicts curative head and neck cancer surgery
Surgery is a mainstay treatment for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). However, the clinical challenge is to identify those patients who would benefit from surgery alone and would not require extensive oncological treatments that cause adverse effects.
In this study, the researchers have identified a novel immunohistochemical (IHC) staining-based method for identifying HNSCC patients who would benefit from surgery alone.
The authors demonstrate that high LIMA1 expression predicted poor survival among HNSCC patients with no evidence of metastatic cancer at the time of diagnosis. Only antibodies that recognize LIMA1-alpha predicted poor treatment response in surgically treated HNSCC patients.
The researchers validated the results using across population-validated tissue microarray (PV-TMA) and prospective patient cohorts.
They also carried out in vitro and in vivo studies and demonstrated that LIMA1 regulated the expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and HNSCC invasion.
https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1038/s44321-025-00266-8
