Abstract
Abstract Head and neck cancer (HNC) remains the sixth most common cancer worldwide with almost 50,000 new diagnoses in the US each year. Although, infection with HPV has emerged as a favorable prognostic factor for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) leading to de-intensifying treatment strategies, no serum biomarkers currently exist to predict tumor response and/or relapse. One candidate serum biomarker is encoded by the human DEK gene. DEK mRNA and protein is highly upregulated in tissue specimens from several tumor types including HNSCC, breast cancer and melanoma and antibodies to DEK are detected in patients with auto-immune disease (juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematous, etc.). Our previous work has demonstrated that DEK is highly and universally expressed in HNSCC tissue specimens regardless of stage or HPV infection. Additionally, in vitro data has suggested that tumor associated macrophages secrete DEK protein leading to the hypothesis that DEK may be present in the serum of cancer patients. In fact, the detection of DEK protein in urine is currently being explored as a diagnostic biomarker for bladder cancer. Here, we sought to determine if secreted DEK protein can be detected in human plasma and if it could be used as a biomarker for HNSCC. Peripheral blood was collected from either patients with newly diagnosed, untreated, HNSCC or age-matched normal healthy controls. Plasma was separated from the samples and subjected to DEK specific ELISA (Cusabio, Wuhan, China). Plasma DEK levels were compared to tumor stage, response to therapy, and overall tumor burden in patients. Preliminary results demonstrate that DEK is indeed present in the plasma of HNSCC patients and we are currently comparing these levels to normal healthy controls. Further analyses are ongoing to determine whether DEK levels predict response to various treatment modalities, correlate with the body's immune response, and whether DEK presence in the serum will predict residual disease and/or early relapse. These data will be important to verify DEK plasma measurements as a clinically useful test and may give insight to future personalized and targeted treatment strategies for HNSCC. Citation Format: Trisha Wise-Draper, Lisa Privette Vinnedge, Arun Sendilnathan. The DEK oncogene may serve as a predictive plasma biomarker in head and neck cancer patients. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 584. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-584
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