The role of KMT2C inactivation is not characterized in this cancer in contrast to other top-mutated genes such as TP53 or NOTCH1. We tested the potential mechanistic role of KMT2C gene aberrations in a FaDu hypopharyngeal cell line model using CRISPR-Cas9-targeted gene inactivation followed by functional assays. Here, TP53 is linked to cancer.