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Esra Gunduz, DDS, PhD; Mehmet Gunduz, MD, PhD; Levent Beder, MD, PhD; Hitoshi Nagatsuka, DDS, PhD; Kunihiro Fukushima, MD, PhD; Recep Sutcu, MD; Namik Delibas, MD; Noboru Yamanaka, MD, PhD; Kenji Shimizu, PhD; Noriyuki Nagai, DDS, PhD

Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2009;135(3):254-260.

Objective  To examine the role of TESTIN as a candidate tumor suppressor gene in head and neck carcinogenesis.

Design  Mutation and messenger RNA (mRNA) expression analyses.

Setting  Academic research.

Patients  Paired normal and tumor samples were obtained from 38 patients with primary head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Main Outcome Measures  Analysis and comparison of TESTIN gene mRNA expression and its relationship to clinicopathologic variables.

Results  Mutation analysis showed a nucleotide and amino acid change in 6 of the 38 tumor samples (16.0%). Semiquantitative mRNA expression analysis of TESTIN revealed a decreased expression in approximately 50% of the tumors compared with their matched normal controls. Interestingly, comparison of clinicopathologic variables to mRNA expression status of TESTIN revealed a significant difference in terms of cancer history (P = .03). Moreover, a higher smoking ratio and a family cancer history were also associated with downregulation of TESTIN, although the difference was not statistically significant (P = .43 and P = .16, respectively). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis demonstrated a worse survival rate among the patients with low TESTIN expression compared with the patients with normal-high TESTIN expression.

Conclusions  Our findings suggest that inactivation of TESTIN is involved in head and neck carcinogenesis through its downregulation. Further studies in various human cancer tissues using a large sample size and in vitro functional studies as well as clinical comparison research studies would give us a better evaluation of TESTIN's role and its possible future application in molecular diagnosis and treatment of different cancer types, including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Author Affiliations: Departments of Oral Pathology and Medicine (Drs E. Gunduz, M. Gunduz, Nagatsuka, and Nagai), Molecular Genetics (Drs E. Gunduz and Shimizu), and Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery (Dr Fukushima), Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan; Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, Wakayama Medical University, Wakayama, Japan (Drs M. Gunduz, Beder, and Yamanaka); and Department of Medical Biochemistry, Suleyman Demirel University, Faculty of Medicine, Isparta, Turkey (Drs Sutcu and Delibasi).

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