About the Authors

Lei Jin

Contributed equally to this work with: Lei Jin, Xicheng Song

Affiliations Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of Stomatology, Jinling Hospital, School of Medicine, Southern Medical University, Nanjing, China

Li Xu

Affiliation Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Xicheng Song

Contributed equally to this work with: Lei Jin, Xicheng Song

Affiliations Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, Yuhuangding Hospital of Qingdao University, Yantai, China

Qingyi Wei

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Erich M. Sturgis

Affiliations Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of Epidemiology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Guojun Li

gli@mdanderson.org

Affiliations Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of Epidemiology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: LJ XS EMS GL. Performed the experiments: LJ XS. Analyzed the data: LX GL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: QW EMS GL. Wrote the paper: LJ LX XS QW EMS GL.