Methods for detection,diagnosis and predicting treatment outcomes for oral squamous cell carcinoma(OSCC)have not changed in decades.Information from studies about molecular changes that occur with these tumors are not useful in the clinic.This is in contrast to breast cancer where global gene expression analysis in the form of the Oncotype DX and Mammaprint tests are used routinely to determine ideal treatment for a large subset of breast tumors.While the first large scale studies of gene expression in both cancer types were done over a dozen years ago,research on OSCC has not led to gene expression profiles that are useful in the clinic.Global gene expression data for well over a thousand breast tumors linked to clinical outcomes has been available online for nearly ten years.This accelerated the development and validation of multiple RNA classifiers used to predict breast cancer treatment outcomes.Molecular characterization of oral and head and neck cancer research has been handicapped primarily due to low sample numbers.The recent release from The Cancer Genome Atlas of global gene expression analyses of over 500 head and neck tumors,including 308 oral tumor samples,obtained by standardized methods,along with linked clinical outcome data,should change this.It makes the vision of including gene expression analysis in OSCC treatment planning an obvious and attainable goal that could occur in the next five years.