Mirshahidi Saied, Yuan Isabella J, Chen Zhong, Simental Alfred, Lee Steve C, Andrade Filho Pedro A, Murry Thomas, Zeng Feng, Duerksen-Hughes Penelope, Wang Charles, Yuan Xiangpeng
Department of Basic Sciences, School of Medicine, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA 92354, USA.
Cancer Center Biospecimen Laboratory, Loma Linda University Medical Center, Loma Linda, CA 92354, USA.
Cancers (Basel). 2024 Jul 31;16(15):2730. doi: 10.3390/cancers16152730.
Black Americans (BAs) with head and neck cancer (HNC) have worse survival outcomes compared to the White patients. While HNC disparities in patient outcomes for BAs have been well recognized, the specific drivers of the inferior outcomes remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated the biologic features of patient tumor specimens obtained during the surgical treatment of oral cancers and performed a follow-up study of the patients' post-surgery recurrences and metastases with the aim to explore whether tumor biologic features could be associated with the poorer outcomes among BA patients compared with White American (WA) patients. We examined the tumor stemness traits and stromal properties as well as the post-surgery recurrence and metastasis of oral cancers among BA and WA patients. It was found that high levels of tumor self-renewal, invasion, tumorigenesis, metastasis, and tumor-promoting stromal characteristics were linked to post-surgery recurrence and metastasis. There were more BA than WA patients demonstrating high stemness traits and strong tumor-promoting stromal features in association with post-surgery tumor recurrences and metastases, although the investigated cases displayed clinically comparable TNM stages and histological grades. These findings demonstrated that the differences in tumor stemness and stromal property among cancers with comparable clinical diagnoses contribute to the outcome disparity in HNCs. More research is needed to understand the genetic and molecular basis of the biologic characteristics underlying the inferior outcomes among BA patients, so that targeting strategies can be developed to reduce HNC disparity.
与白人患者相比，患有头颈癌（HNC）的美国黑人（BA）的生存结果更差。虽然BA患者在患者预后方面的HNC差异已得到充分认识，但较差预后的具体驱动因素仍知之甚少。在此，我们研究了口腔癌手术治疗期间获取的患者肿瘤标本的生物学特征，并对患者术后复发和转移进行了随访研究，旨在探讨与美国白人（WA）患者相比，肿瘤生物学特征是否与BA患者较差的预后相关。我们检查了BA和WA患者的肿瘤干性特征、基质特性以及口腔癌的术后复发和转移情况。研究发现，高水平的肿瘤自我更新、侵袭、肿瘤发生、转移和促肿瘤基质特征与术后复发和转移有关。尽管所研究的病例在临床TNM分期和组织学分级上具有可比性，但与术后肿瘤复发和转移相关的具有高干性特征和强促肿瘤基质特征的BA患者比WA患者更多。这些发现表明，具有可比临床诊断的癌症之间肿瘤干性和基质特性的差异导致了HNC的预后差异。需要更多的研究来了解BA患者较差预后背后生物学特征的遗传和分子基础，以便制定靶向策略来减少HNC差异。
