Identification of a gene expression signature predicting survival in oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma using Monte Carlo cross validation

This study reinforces previous findings supporting the role of ion channel gating, interleukin, calcitonin receptor, and keratinization pathways in tumor progression and treatment response in oral cancer. These results strengthen the argument that differential expression of genes within these pathways reduces tumor susceptibility to treatment. Conducting differential gene expression (DGE) with Monte Carlo cross validation, as this study describes, offers a potential solution to decreasing the variability in DGE results across future studies that are reliant upon highly heterogeneous datasets. This improves the ability of studies reliant upon similarly structured datasets to reach results that are reproducible.