This work was supported by grants from the Plan Nacional de I+D+I 2013-2016 from ISCIII (PI16/00280 and PI19/00560) and CIBERONC (CB16/12/00390), the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria del Principado de Asturias (ISPA), Ayudas a Grupos PCTI Principado de Asturias (IDI2018/155) and the FEDER Funding Program from the European Union. NRI is recipient of a FPU predoctoral fellowship (FPU17/01985) from the Spanish Ministry of Education, RGD is recipient of a Severo Ochoa predoctoral fellowship (BP19-063) from the Principado de Asturias, and STM is recipient of a Sara Borrell postdoctoral fellowship from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (CD16/00103).

The authors declare no conflict of interests. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

2-Aminoethoxydiphenyl borate

2D Gel electrophoresis coupled to mass spectrometry

Calcium-activated chloride channel

Chromatin immunoprecipitation

Voltage-gated chloride channel

Chloride intracellular channel

Calcium release-activated channel

Epithelial to mesenchymal transition

Food and Drug Administration

Gastrointestinal stromal tumours

Glutathione S-transferase

HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

Hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma

Induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes

Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor

5-Nitro-2-(3-phenylpropylamino) benzoic acid

Oro/hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma

Oral squamous cell carcinoma

Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction

Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid

Tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes

Transient receptor potential

Voltage-dependent anion-selective channel

Voltage-dependent calcium channels

Volume-sensitive outwardly rectifying chloride