A digital pathology approach to head and neck squamous cell carcinomas

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) accounts for 2-4% of all malignant lesions and is the most common neoplasia of head and neck district. Its frequency is increasing in last decades, but its prognosis is still unfavourable. Nowadays, there is not a universal consensus about prognostic and predictive markers for OSCC. Digital pathology is a relatively new branch of anatomical pathology that reckons on the digital analysis of whole slide images obtained by a glasses scanner. This process has still some limitations due to machineries costs and the necessity of trained figures, but it also comes with a lot of advantages like reduced analytic errors and less variability between different observers. The aim of this study is to investigate the correlation between p60, a protein involved in chromatin assembly already known as marker for higher risk cancer, and tumor-elicited immune response, focusing on p60 role as immunotherapy responsiveness predictive factor and their value as prognostic factors. We performed an automated immunohistochemical analysis of p60 and immunemarkers using QuPath, an Opensource software for image analysis, comparing their expression in 105 cases. From the results analysis, it emerged that p60 is a possible immunomodulating treatment response predictor, and itself a prognostic factor.