The most studied ncRNAs in HNSC include ANRIL, HOTAIR, SOX2OT, NEAT-1, MALAT-1 and UCA-1 associated with nasopharyngeal, pharyngeal, laryngeal, esophageal, oral or tongue squamous cell carcinomas or metastatic tumours.22,46–48 We were not able to detect expressions of HOTAIR, SOX2OT and MEG-3. Previous reports on these three genes were produced using low throughput PCR-based methods involving cDNA amplification and it is possible that the expression of these transcripts is too low to be detected in the TCGA NGS data. This evidence concerns the gene MALAT1 and tongue squamous cell carcinoma.