Abstract: The oral cancers are the most common tumors in the head and neck cancers.They can be developed from oral leukoplakia and other oral precancerous lesions. Due to the lack of biomarkers for early detection and risk assessment， more than 50% patients are often diagnosed at the late stage. The discovery of tumor markers for early diagnosis of oral carcinomas is becoming a hot research issue.The analysis method based on the metabolomics technology has the potential to come up with tumorassociated biomarkers. Metabonomics becomes a hot spot in the research of pathological mechanism， clinical diagnosis and prediction of diseases. This paper reviews the theoretical basis and techniques of metabonomics and its application in the metabolomics technology in its way into the biomarker discovery of the oral cancers and oral precancerous lesions.

Key words: metabolomics, oral cancers, oral precancerous lesion, tumor biomarkers