Ethics declaration
The present work was carried out at the IRCCS Regina Elena National Cancer Institute. Authorization from the Institutional Ethic Review Board (RS868/16) was obtained, and written informed consent was collected from the human subject involved in this analysis.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported Ministry of Health PNRR (funding issued according to “Missione 6/componente 2/Investimento: 2.1- Rafforzamento e potenziamento della ricerca biomedica del SSN”, funding by NextGenerationEU/H53C22001150001 to BG). PNRR-POC-2022-12376580: “Analyses of HPV and host body fluid biomarkers as non-invasive strategy for detection of head and neck cancer relapse”.
Author contributions
Valentina De Pascale (Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing—original draft), Federica Ganci (Investigation, Methodology, Writing—review & editing), Fabrizio Leone (Methodology), Valentina Manciocco (Investigation), Flaminia Campo (Investigation), Anastasia Mercurio (Investigation), Alina Catalina Palcau (Methodology), Claudio Moretti (Investigation), Frauke Goeman (Investigation), Sara Donzelli (Writing—review & editing), Giulia Orlandi (Software), Federica Orrù (Investigation), Renato Covello (Investigation, Methodology), Paola Muti (Writing—review & editing), Sabrina Strano (Writing—review & editing), Antonello Vidiri (Investigation, Software), Raul Pellini (Investigation), and Giovanni Blandino (Conceptualization, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing—review & editing).
Conflict of interest
None declared. However, it needs to be stated that both the custom mutational panel including the full coding sequence of TP53, CDKN2A, and FAT1 and the 4-microRNAs signature have been patented by G.B. and F.G., (#102020000017896), and by G.B., F.G., V.M., and R.P. (#102020000019024), respectively.