Mutational Signatures May Define Oral Cancers

To characterize the mutational and molecular profiles of oral cavity squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC) without traditional risk factors.

94% of tumors with no identified risk factors were clustered in SBS1 and SBS1/APOBEC groups.
60% of tumors with no identified risk factors were in the SBS1 group.
Younger patients were overrepresented in the SBS1 cluster.
Mutations affecting immune-response genes were enriched in the SBS1 and SBS1/APOBEC clusters.

Remove unsupported conclusions and interpretations.

The study was observational and did not identify specific environmental or infectious causes.
Lower mutation counts in some tumors may complicate mutational-signature assignment.
Validation experiments were limited to two oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma samples.
Cohort derived primarily from US public sequencing data sets may limit generalizability.

Remove unsupported claims and interpretations.