Somatic variants and exon-level copy number changes in five hyperplastic-stage oral leukoplakias.

Oral leukoplakia (OL), an oral potentially malignant disorder begins with a hyperplastic or hyperkeratotic stage at which no variant profiles have been described so far. In this study, we performed exome sequencing of five cases at this stage with no evidence of dysplasia to identify genetic alterations (exon-level copy number alterations, indels, and single nucleotide variants), their association with oral cancer susceptibility.