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Article History

Received: 22 October 2025

Accepted: 3 March 2026

First Online: 11 March 2026

Declarations

:

: For the studies involving fresh oral cancer samples, the tumor tissues were collected after getting informed consent from the patients from the Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram. The protocol was approved by the Institute Human Ethical Committee of Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (IHEC/1/2011/04), and Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram (HEC/24/2011). Paraffin embedded tissue blocks for making the tissue microarray (TMA) were collected from the archives of Cochin Cancer Research Centre, Cochin, and the preparation of TMA, IHC staining, scoring and imaging were done at St. Johns Research Institute. The protocol was approved by Institute Human Ethical Committee of all the respective study centers (IEC/150/2023, IHEC/1112022_Exl11). All the animal experiments were conducted adhering to the ARRIVE guidelines, and as per the approved guidelines of the Institute Animal Ethics Committee (IAEC/874/TM/2002, IAEC/875/TM/2002 and IAEC/894/TM/2002) which is under the Committee for the Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CCSEA), Govt. of India. The ethical end points for studies involving orthotopic injection and subcutaneous injection, were < 1000 mm 3 . The recombinant DNA works were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Bio-safety Committee (71/IBSC/TTM/2022, 72/IBSC/TTM/2022, and 156/IBSC/TTM/2024).

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare no competing interests.