Patients and samples

A total of 125 OTSCC tumor tissues and paired adjacent tissues (>5 cm from the boundary of the tumor) were collected from patients who underwent surgical resection between June 2011 and August 2013 at the Suining Central Hospital. The clinicopathological characteristics of patients were obtained from the Suining Central Hospital. All clinical samples were stored in liquid nitrogen (12). A follow-up was implemented to evaluate the survival rate of patients 5 years post-surgery. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Suining Central Hospital (approval no. 20110067, Suining, China) and was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.