The salivary glands are key components of the mouth and play a central role in its physiology. Their importance may be appreciated considering their number, occurrence in pairs, and distribution in the mouth: two parotids, two submandibular, two sublingual, and many other small ones scattered throughout the mouth. They produce saliva, without which ingestion of non-liquid nutrients and speech would be practically impossible. Nevertheless, the physiology and pathology of salivary glands are poorly understood. For instance, tumors of salivary glands occur, and their incidence is on the rise, but their etiology and pathogenesis are virtually unknown, although some risk factors have been identified. Likewise, the role of the chaperoning system in the development, normal functioning, and pathology, including carcinogenesis, remains to be determined. This scarcity of basic knowledge impedes progress in diagnosis, disease monitoring, and therapeutics of salivary gland tumors. We are currently involved in examining the chaperoning system of human salivary glands and we performed a search of the literature to determine what has been reported relating to oncology. We found data pertaining to six components of the chaperone system, namely HSP27, HSP60, HSP70, HSP84, HSP86, and GRP78, and to another HSP, the heme-oxygenase H-O1, also named HSP32, which does not belong in the chaperoning system but seemed to have potential as a biomarker for diagnostic purposes as much as the HSP/chaperones mentioned above. The reported quantitative variations of the six chaperones were distinctive enough to distinguish malignant from benign tumors, suggesting that these molecules hold potential as biomarkers useful in differential diagnosis. Also, the quantitative variations described accompanying tumor development, as observed in cancers of other organs, encourages research to elucidate whether chaperones play a role in the initiation and/or progression of salivary gland tumors.

中文翻译：

---

唾液腺肿瘤中的分子伴侣。

唾液腺是口腔的关键成分，在口腔生理中起着核心作用。考虑到它们的数量，成对出现和在口腔中的分布，它们的重要性可能会得到赞赏：两个腮腺，两个下颌下颌，两个舌下以及许多分布在整个口腔中的小结节。它们会产生唾液，没有唾液，几乎不可能摄入非液体营养物质和言语。然而，唾液腺的生理和病理学知之甚少。例如，发生唾液腺肿瘤，并且其发病率正在上升，但是尽管已经确定了一些危险因素，但其病因和发病机制实际上是未知的。同样，伴侣系统在发育，正常功能和病理学（包括致癌作用）中的作用仍有待确定。这种基础知识的匮乏阻碍了唾液腺肿瘤的诊断，疾病监测和治疗。我们目前正在研究人类唾液腺的伴侣系统，并进行了文献检索以确定与肿瘤学有关的报道。我们发现了与分子伴侣系统的六个组成部分有关的数据，即HSP27，HSP60，HSP70，HSP84，HSP86和GRP78，以及另一个HSP血红素加氧酶H-O1，也称为HSP32，它不属于分子伴侣系统，但似乎具有与上述HSP /分子伴侣一样多的用于诊断目的的生物标记物。所报告的六种分子伴侣的定量变化足以区分恶性肿瘤与良性肿瘤，提示这些分子具有作为生物标志物用于鉴别诊断的潜力。同样，如在其他器官的癌症中观察到的，伴随肿瘤发展而描述的定量变化，也鼓励研究阐明伴侣分子是否在唾液腺肿瘤的发生和发展中起作用。