Additionally, clinical results further revealed that Sox2 and Oct4 expression was inversely correlated with miR-145 in the tissues of areca quid chewing-associated OSCC patients.
Immunohistochemical staining was used to analyze the expression of OCT4 in 61 cases of laryngeal squamous carcinoma and 10 cases of the adjacent normal laryngeal tissues.
Moreover, a previously characterized OCT4/SOX2/NANOG signature effectively separated lung SCCs from adenocarcinomas in two independent publicly available datasets which correlated with increased SOX2 mRNA in SCCs.
We propose that Oct3/4, Sox2 and Nanog are associated with tumor hypoxia characterized in oral SCC and that these factors may also contribute to the undifferentiated potency observed in oral SCC clinically.