Serum Concentration of MMP-9 as a Predictive Biomarker for the Progression of Oral Cancer.

Background: Oral cancer is the most prominent cancer subtype among all head and neck cancers, the incidence and prevalence of which has been consistently increasing in past years around the globe. At advanced stages, oral cancer imparts significant mortality, morbidity, and mutilation among the patients, and therefore, diagnosis and treatment of the disease at early stages are considered the optimum strategy for the management of the disease. Since molecular changes appear earlier than physical symptoms, several molecular biomarkers are currently being investigated for their role in diagnosing and treating disease. MMP-9 belongs to the family of proteinases that are involved in cytoskeletal degradation, which is a crucial phase of cancer progression.

Objective: In the present study, we analyzed the serum concentration of MMP-9 in oral cancer patients and tried to establish MMP-9 as a predictive biomarker for the progression of oral cancer. We also correlated the clinical, sociodemographic and biochemical parameters with the serum concentration of MMP-9 in oral cancer patients.

Methods: Serum was extracted from the blood sample of 38 oral cancer patients and was analyzed for the concentration of MMP-9 using sandwiched ELISA. Predesigned proforma was used to capture the clinical, sociodemographic and biochemical parameters. Unpaired t-test was used to compare two means, one way ANOVA was used to compare more than two means and Pearson's correlation was used to correlate the variables.

Results: The mean concentration of MMP-9 in patients of oral cancer was 816.9 ± 236.1 ng/mL. The MMP-9 expression level was higher at advanced oral cancer stages than in the early stages. No significant difference in the MMP expression was found in terms of sociodemographic risk factor and tumor site. MMP-9 exhibit significant negative correlation with the HDL and significantly positive correlation with the PTI. Rest of the biochemical parameters does not exhibit significant correlation.

Conclusion: The present study suggests that serum concentration of MMP-9 can be a predictive biomarker for the progression of oral cancer, which needs to be validated by performing further longitudinal cross-sectional studies by taking ample sample size.