With the increasing demand for noninvasive approaches in monitoring head and neck cancer, circulating nucleic acids have been shown to be a promising tool. We focused on the global transcriptome of serum samples of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients in comparison with healthy individuals. We compared gene expression patterns of 36 samples. Twenty-four participants including 16 HNSCC patients (from 12 patients we obtained blood samples 1 year posttreatment) and 8 control subjects were recruited. The Illumina HumanWG-6 v3 Expression BeadChip was used to profile and identify the differences in serum mRNA transcriptomes. We found 159 genes to be significantly changed (Storey's P value <0.05) between normal and cancer serum specimens regardless of factors including p53 and B-cell lymphoma family members (Bcl-2, Bcl-XL). In contrast, there was no difference in gene expression between samples obtained before and after surgery in cancer patients. We suggest that microarray analysis of serum cRNA in patients with HNSCC should be suitable for refinement of early stage diagnosis of disease that can be important for development of new personalized strategies in diagnosis and treatment of tumours but is not suitable for monitoring further development of disease.

Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Institute of Molecular Genetics Department of Genomics and Bioinformatics Videnska 1083 14220 Prague 4 Czech Republic

Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery 1st Faculty of Medicine Charles University University Hospital Motol Institute of Postgraduate Medicine 5 Uvalu 84 15006 Prague 5 Czech Republic

Department of Stomatology 1st Faculty of Medicine Charles University Kateřinská 32 12108 Prague 2 Czech Republic

Institute of Anatomy 1st Faculty of Medicine Charles University U Nemocnice 3 12800 Prague 2 Czech Republic

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