‘Search less, verify more’ – Reviewing salivary biomarkers in oral cancer detection

Abstract

Oral squamous cell carcinoma is one of the commonest head and neck malignancies with approximately 350,000 cases reported annually and a mortality rate of 50% often attributed to late clinical presentation. Due to the close relationship between saliva bio‐fluid and tumour lesions, optimizing salivary biomarkers for disease detection and screening provides a major new research direction in diagnostic oral oncology. As inter‐ and intra‐tumour heterogeneity are common within oral cavity neoplasms, it is unlikely that a single diagnostic or ‘risk‐stratifying’ saliva biomarker will suffice for universal translation to clinical practice. Therefore, this article highlights a number of promising saliva biomarker combinations for oral cavity cancer detection that require further research and validation to determine their true diagnostic potential.