Oral squamous cell carcinoma may originate from bone marrow-derived stem cells.

Molecules that demonstrate a clear association with the aggressiveness of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) have not yet been identified. The current study hypothesized that tumor cells in OSCC have three different origins: Epithelial stem cells, oral tissue stem cells from the salivary gland and bone marrow (BM) stem cells. It was also hypothesized that carcinomas derived from less-differentiated stem cells have a greater malignancy. In the present study, sex chromosome analysis by fluorescence hybridization and/or microdissection PCR was performed in patients with OSCC that developed after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) from the opposite sex. OSCC from 3 male patients among the 6 total transplanted patients were considered to originate from donor-derived BM cells. A total of 2/3 patients had distant metastasis, resulting in a poor prognosis. In a female patient with oral potentially malignant disorder who underwent HSCT, there were 10.7% Y-containing cells in epithelial cells, suggesting that some epithelial cells were from the donor. Subsequently, gene expression patterns in patients with possible BM stem cell-derived OSCC were compared with those in patients with normally developed OSCC by microarray analysis. A total of 3 patients with BM stem cell-derived OSCC exhibited a specific pattern of gene expression. Following cluster analysis by the probes identified on BM stem cell-derived OSCC, 2 patients with normally developed OSCC were included in the cluster of BM stem cell-derived OSCC. If the genes that could discriminate the origin of OSCC were identified, OSCCs were classified into the three aforementioned categories. If diagnosis can be performed based on the origin of the cancer cells, a more specific therapeutic strategy may be implemented to improve prognosis. This would be a paradigm shift in diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for OSCC.