Individualized five-year risk assessment for oral premalignant lesion progression to cancer.

OBJECTIVE: The standard of care for premalignant lesion risk assessment is dysplasia grading by histopathology. With significant overlap between dysplasia grades and high inter- and intraobserver variations, histopathology dysplasia grading alone is not a useful prognostic tool. Our aim is to investigate whether a method for quantitatively assessing S100A7, a prognostic biomarker, using image analysis can better predict clinical outcome in cases with oral dysplasia.

STUDY DESIGN: Using the Visiopharm image analysis system, we analyzed a cohort of 150 oral biopsy samples to build and test Straticyte, a model for individualized assessment of the 5-year risk of progression of oral precancerous lesions to invasive squamous cell carcinomas.

RESULTS: Straticyte classified lesions more accurately than histopathological dysplasia grading for risk to progression to cancer over the following 5 years. The sensitivity of low-risk versus intermediate- and high-risk Straticyte groups was 95% compared to 75% for mild versus moderate and severe dysplasia. Furthermore, the negative predictive value for low-risk versus intermediate- and high-risk Straticyte groups was 78% compared to 59% for mild versus moderate and severe dysplasia.

CONCLUSION: By quantitatively assessing S100A7, Straticyte better defines the risk for developing oral squamous cell carcinoma than histopathological dysplasia grading alone.