About the Authors

Wei Cao

Contributed equally to this work with: Wei Cao, Rachel de Oliveira Ribeiro

Affiliations Shanghai Key Laboratory of Stomatology, Department of Oral Maxillofacial-Head and Neck Oncology, Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China, Department of Oncology and Diagnostic Sciences, University of Maryland Dental School, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Rachel de Oliveira Ribeiro

Contributed equally to this work with: Wei Cao, Rachel de Oliveira Ribeiro

Current address: Instituto do cancer Dr Arnaldo, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Affiliation Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Diane Liu

Affiliation Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Pierre Saintigny

Affiliation Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Ronghui Xia

Affiliations Shanghai Key Laboratory of Stomatology, Department of Oral Maxillofacial-Head and Neck Oncology, Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China, Department of Oncology and Diagnostic Sciences, University of Maryland Dental School, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Yuwen Xue

Current address: Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China

Affiliation Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Ruxian Lin

Affiliation Department of Oncology and Diagnostic Sciences, University of Maryland Dental School, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Li Mao

Affiliations Department of Oncology and Diagnostic Sciences, University of Maryland Dental School, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Hening Ren

Hren@umaryland.edu

Affiliations Department of Oncology and Diagnostic Sciences, University of Maryland Dental School, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, 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: HR LM. Performed the experiments: WC ROR RHX RXL YWX. Analyzed the data: DL WC ROR HR LM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DL PS LM HR. Wrote the paper: HR LM WC.