Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a multifactorial disease involving genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. It is characterized by a pattern of aggressive growth, high metastatic potential and high mortality rates. Despite advances in technology in the surgical treatment, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, the five-year survival rate has no significant improvement in recent years. By regulating the expression of target genes, microRNAs play an important role in the initiation and progression of human cancers. Therefore, they are a promising tool for the identification of biomarkers of risk, as well as prognostic and therapeutic targets. In order to investigate the miRNAs expression profile in ten tissues of OSCC were characterized based on data generated from high-performance sequencing. Furthermore, by qPCR we assessed the adjacent tissue to the OSCC for four miRNAs. The results showed 17 differentially expressed miRNAs were able to discriminate the tissue without cancer. Among these, we found seven new miRNAs (hsalet- 7c, hsa-miR-10a, hsa-miR-199a, hsa-miR-381, hsa-miR-501, hsa-miR-654 and hsamiR- 941) which are not described in the literature their participation in OSCC. Additionally, we found that the four miRNAs hsa-miR-221, hsa-miR-21, hsa-miR-135b and hsa-miR-29c presented overexpression in the adjacent tissue, confirming the field cancerization effect. The results revealed that these miRNAs are potential biomarkers occurring in OSCC with the ability to identify individuals at high risk of developing this type of cancer, and indicate their utility as potential therapeutic targets.
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