• Keynote lecture
  • KN-32

Alcohol shapes multiple microenvironments in oral cancer initiation

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Conference room 3-4

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  • Keynote Lecture

Abstract

Head and neck cancer (HNC) is ranked the seventh leading cause of cancer worldwide, with a 5-year survival rate of less than 50% in advanced cases. Together with tobacco smoking, alcohol drinking is one of the major risk factors for HNC. Despite the advances in understanding HNC progression, the mechanism involved in HNC initiation is largely unknown. Through spatially resolved and bulk proteomics using holistic and reductionist approaches, we demonstrate in a 94 patient-cohort that alcohol modifies the proteome pattern of stromal and epithelial cells, circulating immune cells, primary fibroblasts and their extracellular vesicles (EVs). Besides tissue biopsy-derived EVs, alcohol-treated fibroblasts and their EVs shape the immune response. In addition, a selected protein, identified in both biopsy-derived EVs and those from alcohol-treated fibroblasts, modulates the phenotype of specific immune cells. These results improve our understanding of the molecular changes induced by alcohol in multiple microenvironments, and highlight the role of EVs in expanding its toxicity.