This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of
the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University. Written
informed consent was obtained from all patients. The selection
criteria for patients with OSCC were: (1) histological confirmation
of OSCC and (2) no prior history of other cancers. All patients
were diagnosed and treated at the Second Affiliated Hospital
of Nanchang University from March 2009 to June 2014. Tumor
stage was classified according to the 7th edition of the classification
of malignant tumors of the American Joint Committee
on Cancer [17]. Tumor grade was classified following the WHO
(2005) criteria [18]. By last follow-up, 37 patients had died from
the disease and the duration of follow-up was 60 months. Nine
patients dropped-out from the study. The overall survival rate
of OSCC patients in the study was 65.09%. For qRT-PCR, 106
pairs of fresh OSCC and matched adjacent normal tissue specimens
were collected from patients who underwent surgery in
the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University.