To the editor,

We read with great interest about the recent work by Liu et al. in Oral Oncology. The authors studied the enhancement of radioresistance in hypopharyngeal cancer cell lines via the homologous recombination (HR) DNA damage repair pathway [1] and observed the high expression levels of four key proteins, BRCA1, BRCA2, RPA1 and Rad51, in HR pathway in radioresistant cells and xenografts. Silencing of RPA1 could reduce the radioresistance. While this study provided the potential of targeting HR pathway to conquer the radioresistance in hypophayngeal cancer cell lines, it also raised some concerns that need to be clarified for the readers of Oral Oncology.