Alcohol dehydrogenase-4 (ADH4) plays key role in radiation resistance, inhibit the DNA damage and cell death induced by radiotherapy, and ADH4 has been identified as a cancer stem marker in different cancer (Januchowski et al., 2013; Al-Shamma et al., 2023) Stanniocalcin 2 (STC2) overexpressed in many cancer including head and neck cancer is correlated with tumor development and metastasis and play substantial role in radiation sensitivity via activating PI3K/AKT/and Snail signaling (Qie and Sang, 2022; Yang et al., 2016). Here, ADH4 is linked to head and neck cancer.