We and others have shown in the past that aberrant activation of spliceosome complex-associated proteins has been shown to influence cellular transformation leading to development of cancer, including HNSCC64,65.Our proteomic data shows significant overexpression of splicing proteins serine and arginine rich splicing factor 2 (SRSF2) and splicing factor 3b (SF3B1) (1.9 and 1.5 fold overexpressed respectively; p-value ≤ 0.05) in tobacco treated cells. Here, SRSF2 is linked to cancer.