• Application of salivaomics for early diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic approaches of oral cavity cancer by molecular biomarkers
  • Mahtab Mottaghi,1,*
    1. Student Research Committee, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran


  • Introduction: Oral cavity cancer is the sixteenth most common cancer worldwide, with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) comprising more than 90% of it. There are no definitive early diagnosis biomarkers for oral cancer screening because of the heterogeneous nature of oral cancer. The five-year survival rate for OSCC remains low at 15%–50% Since the patients report when they develop advanced stage; however, early diagnosis can promote it at around 85%. In this way, early detection plays a critical role in improving survival rates and prognosis for patients. Saliva, the most non-invasively collected body fluid, is evaluated for biomarkers, specifically in liquid biopsy, that can provide a considerable platform number of molecules correlated to oral cavity cancer. Human saliva provides whole-body images and is introduced as a “mirror of the body's health.” Evaluation of biofluid markers can be applied for early diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic approaches to oral cancer.
  • Methods: Although biopsy is known as the ultimate gold standard for diagnosing oral cancer, advanced techniques have been developed to predict the oral tumorigenesis process. Due to the development of the salivary proteome, transcriptome, metabolome, and microbiome as valuable diagnostics indices, saliva can be applied for personalized or precision medicine. Non-coding RNAs, microRNAs, mRNAs, circulating tumor cells, exosomes, extracellular vesicles, antigens, and other proteins can be assessed from saliva. These biological molecules can play a pivotal role in the etiopathogenesis of oral cancer and can applied in early diagnosis of oral cavity cancer. Hence, this technology has been applied as sensitive, noninvasive, cost-effective, and patient-friendly for assessing biomarkers.
  • Results: In addition, salivaomics was applied to diagnose colon cancer, type II diabetes, breast cancer, renal diseases, and cardiovascular diseases. The profile signature of genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, etc., can be assessed by single-cell analysis due to salivaomics. The protein, RNA, and DNA molecules can act as oncogenes to promote tumorigenesis or tumor suppressors to inhibit tumor development based on their targets. Their dysregulation can affect cell growth, apoptosis, differentiation, invasion, metastasis, inflammation, and immunity.
  • Conclusion: Salivaomics can be applied as a reliable method for screening and monitoring oral cancer patients by saliva molecule biomarkers. This method can discover novel biomarkers and be applied for future early diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic approaches.
  • Keywords: Mouth Neoplasms, salivaomics, Biomarkers, Saliva