To study upregulation of TRPV1 on anatomically-relevant sensory neurons innervating the tongue, which we identified with the retrograde tracer DiI, in the setting of oral cancer, we used two oral cancer mouse models, the xenograft model with athymic nude mice and a carcinogen-induced oral cancer mouse model with wildtype C57BL/6 mice. Here, TRPV1 is linked to lip and oral cavity carcinoma.