The contribution of cholinergic signalling to cancer onset and growth [24] and our previous reports showing that neoplastic transformation alters the level of AChE and/or BChE activities and the content of ChE-mRNAs in human breast, lymph node, intestine, lung, kidney and prostate [8, 18, 25, 26] prompted us to compare unaffected tissue samples and head and neck tumours for possible changes in the expression of AChE and BChE, which would alter the availability of ACh, and to test the usefulness of the changes in ChE expression as reliable diagnostic or prognostic markers. This evidence concerns the gene BCHE and head and neck neoplasm.