urora B kinase activity toward H3T80. A similar instance has been observed for H3S10ph and survivin. Survivin is a member of the chromosome passenger complex with Aurora B and INCEP, and upon phosphorylation of H3T3 survivin directs Aurora B activity toward H3S10ph. However, even in the absence of survivin Aurora B shows activity toward H3S10, which is not the case for H3T80. Furthermore, the sequence surrounding H3K79/T80 and F78-K79-T80, does not match the Aurora B consensus sequence, meaning that Aurora B is not predicted to be a T80 kinase but likely lies upstream of the H3T80 kinase. In addition, H3K79me3T80ph appears to identify a subset of primary cutaneous melanomas with metastatic potential.The value of histone H3 N-terminal modifications as a prognostic marker of invasive melanoma in a clinical setting is 118414-82-7 chemical information emerging; however, the utility of specific proliferative markers as prognostic indicator appears context dependent. For instance, a study by Ladstein et al. examined PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19837048 H3S10ph in nodular invasive melanomas and found that although H3S10ph is a mitotic marker, it did not demonstrate prognostic value for nodular melanomas. We have detected H3K79me3T80ph in primary cutaneous melanomas, and it appears to identify a subset of primary melanomas with metastatic potential. Additional studies on separate cohorts may be needed to determine possible clinical applications, but our results reveal a possible use of H3K79me3T80ph as a biomarker for the identification of primary cutaneous melanoma with more aggressive clinical behaviour. Recent studies have shown an association between altered splicing machinery and cancers.19,20 Dysregulation of splicing has been reported as an important factor in leukemia.21-23 Alterations in spliceosome associated genes/proteins can significantly impact alternative splicing events like exon skipping or intron retention as reported in breast cancer, lung adenocarcinoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia.22,24,25 We identified dysregulation of multiple proteins encoded by genes involved in pre-mRNA splicing. Overexpression of splicing regulators including SRSF5, SRSF6, SF3A2, SF3A3 and RBM17 was observed in HNSCC cells compared to a normal oral cell line. Additionally, we observed significant dysregulation in the phosphorylation pattern of splicing regulators across HNSCC cell lines. Our phosphoproteome data indicates hyperphosphorylation of proteins including SRSF2, SRSF6, SRSF9, SRSF11, PRPF4B and SRPK2 in the HNSCC cell lines. We observed a 2-fold increase in phosphorylation of serine/arginine rich protein kinase 2 in the panel of HNSCC cell lines. This is also evident from our Western blot data, where the expression of pSRPK2 was below detectable levels in the normal oral keratinocytes. Though multiple studies have looked into the landscape of alternate splice forms of various proteins as biomarkers, there are limited studies on the role of splicing kinases in cancer progression.26-28 Several studies have shown the involvement of various members of splicing kinases, especially SRPKs in multiple cellular processes including proliferation and angiogenesis.29,30 Overexpression of splicing factors has been reported in lung, colon and breast cancers.13,31,32 SR protein specific kinases, which is a highly conserved group of kinases, phosphorylates the SR domain and regulates CANCER BIOLOGY & THERAPY 225 the splicing activity of SR proteins.14,33 Among the members of SRPKs, the role of SRPK1 in cancer has been esta