Expression of Matrix Metalloproteinases in Oral Cancer Patients Who Are Betel Quid Users

The rate of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the highest among oral cancers, and most of these patients have chewed betel nuts for a long time. Betel nut chewing has been proven to cause oral cancer. During tumor invasion and proliferation, matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) family are some of the most important factors. MMPs can remodel peripheral tissues of tumors, and their expression can be induced during interactions among tumor cells, the extracellular matrix (ECM), and inflammatory cells. Thus the up- and downregulated expressions of MMPs significantly differ when applied to predicting tumor cell invasion and transfer. The overexpression of some MMPs was associated with oral cancer occurrence, proliferation, lymph node metastasis, and prognosis in recent studies. The Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery of Chi-Mei Medical Center (Tainan, Taiwan) has particularly studied MMP expressions in patient, associated with betel nut chewing. Significant increases in MMP-1, -2, -3, -8, -9, and -28 expression in oral cancer patients with betel nut chewing habit have recently been found in our studies and reported in other papers. Betel nut extract (ANE) and arecoline are known to trigger MMP expression signals based on MEK/ERK and P1-3K signal transduction expression intensities and MMP production increments. This paper collected and analysed our data of MMPs studies. Our findings show the correspondence with other researchers’ reports. We think that these MMPs can be considered to be used as oral cancer cell markers and can be used to predict cancer prognosis.