Both oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and cervical cancer (CC) disproportionately affect low-income and rural individuals in the United States. Developing quick, accessible testing methods for OSCC and CC provides an avenue to combat challenges low income and rural populations face and to obtain early detection, resulting in greater survivorship and reducing the inherent health disparities and barriers that exist among these communities. 

Inhibitor of Differentiation 1 (ID1) plays a key role in tumorigenesis and regulates cell proliferation. We propose an ID1-based detection methodology; however, the quantification of ID1 as a specific marker for both cancers is understudied. While ID1 expression has been characterized in literature, reports are limited, and display some discrepancies between cancer types. This project aims to evaluate ID1 as a relevant biomarker for OSCC and CC through immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis in tissue microarrays. 

Using H-DAB immunohistochemistry with an ID1 primary antibody, 62 Stage I/II OSCC samples, 38 normal, and 22 chronic inflammatory samples were analyzed using QuPath, an open-source digital pathology software. Similar H-DAB IHC was conducted with various stages of CC tissues, totaling 99 samples and 10 normal tissues.  

Results indicate through optical density value comparison that ID1 is significantly (p<0.0001) overexpressed in early-stage OSCC (2.3e5±9e4) tissues compared to both normal (1.6e5±7e4) and chronic inflammatory (1.5e5±4e4) samples. In CC, ID1 was significantly (p<0.05) overexpressed in both early (3e5±1e5; p=0.0001) and late-stage (3e4±3e4; p=0.0002) tissues relative to normal tissue. 

The promising findings present opportunities for ID1 as a novel biomarker, namely through its incorporation in novel plasmid-based testing methods that indicate tumor presence.