February 2010 – Page 3 – Oral Cancer News

Human papillomavirus, p16 and p53 expression associated with survival of head and neck cancer

Source: 7thspace.com Author: staff P16 and p53 protein expression, and high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV-HR) types have been associated with survival in head and neck cancer (HNC). Evidence suggests that multiple molecular pathways need to be targeted to improve the poor prognosis of HNC. Purpose: This study examined the individual and joint effects of tumor markers for differences in predicting HNC survival. P16 and p53 expression were detected from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues by immunohistochemical staining. HPV DNA was detected by PCR and DNA sequencing in 237 histologically confirmed HNC patients. Results: Overexpression of p16 (p16+) and p53 (p53+) occurred in 38% and 48% of HNC tumors, respectively. HPV-HR was detected in 28% of tumors. Worse prognosis was found in tumors that were p53+ (disease-specific mortality: adjusted hazard ratios, HR=1.9, 95% CI: 1.04-3.4) or HPV (overall survival: adj. HR=2.1, 1.1-4.3) but no association in survival was found by p16 status. Compared to the molecular marker group with the best prognosis (p16+/p53/HPV-HR: referent), the p16/p53+/HPV group had the lowest overall survival (84% vs. 60%, p<0.01; HR=4.1, 1.7-9.9) and disease-specific survival (86% vs. 66%, p<0.01; HR=4.0, 1.5-10.7). Compared to the referent, the HRs of the other six joint biomarker groups ranged from 1.6-3.4 for overall mortality and 0.9-3.9 for disease-specific mortality. Conclusion: The p16/p53/HPV joint groups showed greater distinction in clinical outcomes compared to results based on the individual biomarkers alone. This finding suggests that assessing multiple molecular markers in HNC patients will better predict the diverse outcomes and potentially the type of treatment [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-13T10:22:17-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Incidence of oral cancer in relation to nickel and arsenic concentrations in farm soils in Taiwan

Source: 7thspace.com Author: staff Purpose: To explore if exposures to specific heavy metals in the environment is a new risk factor of oral cancer, one of the fastest growing malignancies in Taiwan, in addition to the two established risk factors, cigarette smoking and betel quid chewing. Methods: This is an observational study utilized the age-standardized incidence rates of oral cancer in the 316 townships and precincts of Taiwan, local prevalence rates of cigarette smoking and betel quid chewing, demographic factors, socio-economic conditions, and concentrations in farm soils of the eight kinds of heavy metal. Spatial regression and GIS (Geographic Information System) were used. The registration contained 22,083 patients, who were diagnosed with oral cancer between 1982 and 2002. The concentrations of metal in the soils were retrieved from a nation-wide survey in the 1980s. Results: The incidence rate of oral cancer is geographically related to the concentrations of arsenic and nickel in the patients'residential areas, with the prevalence of cigarette smoking and betel quid chewing as controlled variables. Conclusions: Beside the two established risk factors, cigarette smoking and betel quid chewing, arsenic and nickel in farm soils may be new risk factors for oral cancer. These two kinds of metal may involve in the development of oral cancer. Further studies are required to understand the pathways via which metal in the farm soils exerts its effects on human health. Notes: 1. Authors: Che-Chun SuYo-Yu LinTsun-Kuo ChangChi-Ting ChiangJian-An ChungYun-Ying HsuIe-Bin Lian 2. Source: BMC Public Health 2010, 10:67

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-13T10:17:43-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Induction chemotherapy before concomitant chemoradiotherapy improves outcomes of patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer

Source: CancerConsultants Author: Staff Researchers from Italy have reported that induction (neoadjuvant) chemotherapy prior to concomitant chemoradiotherapy improves outcomes of patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer. The details of this Phase II randomized trial were published early online in the Annals of Oncology on December 23, 2009.[1] There have been several randomized and non-randomized clinical trials suggesting that the concomitant administration of platinum-based chemotherapy and radiotherapy is superior to radiotherapy alone for the treatment of patients with advanced head and neck cancer for local and regional control. Most trials, but not all, have also shown a survival advantage for combined treatment. Two randomized trials in the May 7, 2004 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine documented the effects of adding platinum-based chemotherapy to post-operative radiotherapy for the treatment of patients with advanced head and neck cancers. A recent large randomized trial performed by the UK Head and Neck (UKHAN1) trial reported that concurrent chemoradiotherapy reduces recurrences and death in patients with advanced head and neck cancer. However, researchers are still attempting to determine the optimal way to administer radiotherapy and chemotherapy to improve outcomes of patients with advanced head and neck cancer. Previous Phase II non-randomized studies have suggested benefit from neoadjuvant induction chemotherapy prior to the administration of definitive concomitant chemoradiotherapy for treatment of patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer. The current study involved 101 patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer who were randomly allocated to treatment with concomitant chemoradiotherapy alone or to [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-03-05T07:37:01-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

New vaccine against HPV approved in Canada

Source: www.ctv.ca Author: staff Canadian women have a choice of two vaccines against HPV, the family of viruses that can cause cervical cancer, now that Health Canada has approved GlaxoSmithKline's vaccine, Cervarix. The vaccine, which is expected to be available by the end of the month, will compete against Gardasil, a product of Merck Canada, which has been on the Canadian market since 2006. Cervarix has been available in Europe since 2007, and was approved in the U.S. this past fall. Health Canada said its approval was based on a review of clinical trials on nearly 30,000 women. The competing vaccines will be similarly priced, at about $400. Each vaccine requires three doses and are meant for girls and women aged 10 to 25, ideally before they become sexually active. While there are differences between the two vaccines, each offers good protection against infection with the most dangerous strains of HPV, the Society of Gynecologic Oncology of Canada (GOC) said in a statement Tuesday. The GOC added that each vaccine has had an excellent safety profile both in pre-market testing and after extensive use worldwide. Cervarix is designed to protect against two human papillomavirus strains: HPV 16 and 18. Those strains are responsible for more than 70 per cent of cases of cervical cancer. It also offers some protection against three other cancer-causing strains HPV 31, 33 and 45. Between them, the four strains account for more than 80 per cent of cervical cancer cases. Gardasil also prevents infection with [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-11T09:55:32-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Sentinel nodes predict spread in oral cancer

Source: www.medpagetoday.com Author: Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today In early oral squamous cell carcinoma, a sentinel node biopsy correctly predicted an absence of lymphatic metastasis in all but 4% of patients, researchers said. For T1 and T2 lesions that were clinically node-negative, the procedure -- combined with additional sectioning and immunohistochemistry -- yielded a negative predictive value of 96%, according to Francisco Civantos Jr., MD, of the University of Miami, and colleagues. For T1 lesions, the value was 100%, while for T2 cancers it was 94%, the researchers reported online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The finding may position the procedure as an intermediate option between watchful waiting and selective neck dissection, the researchers said, asserting that it's now "reasonable" to conduct a head-to-head trial of sentinel node biopsy and neck dissection. The procedure has significantly increased the sensitivity for detecting lymphatic metastasis in melanoma and breast cancer patients, Civantos and colleagues noted. But in oral cancer, many surgeons prefer a completion neck dissection, they added, despite the "measurable morbidity" that's associated with the procedure. On the other hand, because of that morbidity, other specialists prefer watchful waiting and elective neck irradiation. To investigate the issue, Civantos and colleagues conducted a multicenter trial in which patients with early invasive oral cancers were treated with both procedures -- a sentinel node biopsy, followed by completion selective neck dissection. The primary goal was to see if a negative hematoxylin and eosin finding on the sentinel node biopsy accurately predicted [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-09T21:42:01-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

F.D.A. to increase medical radiation oversight

Source: nytimes.com Authors: Walt Bogdanich & Rebecca R. Ruiz The federal Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it would take steps to more stringently regulate three of the most potent forms of medical radiation, including increasingly popular CT scans, some of which deliver the radiation equivalent of 400 chest X-rays. With the announcement, the F.D.A. puts its regulatory muscle behind a growing movement to make life-saving medical radiation — both diagnostic and therapeutic — safer. Last week, the leading radiation oncology association called for enhanced safety measures. And a Congressional committee was set to hear testimony Wednesday on the weak oversight of medical radiation, but the hearing was canceled because of bad weather. The F.D.A. has for weeks been investigating why more than 300 patients in four hospitals were overradiated by powerful CT scans used to detect strokes. The overdoses were first discovered last year at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where patients received up to eight times as much radiation as intended. The errors occurred over 18 months and were detected only after patients lost their hair. In making the announcement, the F.D.A. said it hoped to reduce unnecessary radiation exposure from three medical imaging procedures: CT scans, which provide three-dimensional images; nuclear medicine studies, in which patients are given a radioactive substance and doctors watch it move through the body; and fluoroscopies, in which a radiation-emitting device provides a continuous internal image on a monitor. “These types of imaging exams expose patients to ionizing radiation, a [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-09T21:34:45-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

New DNA therapy for advanced mouth cancer

Source: www.dentistry.co.uk Author: staff A research team has been awarded a patent after developing a new DNA therapy for head and neck cancer sufferers. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the US, aims to develop a safe and effective alternative to standard chemotherapy treatments which cause debilitating side-effects. Based on a form of genetic therapy called ‘antisense', the new DNA therapy injections target the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), blocking the growth of a protein which is found on the surface of many types of cancer cells. During the initial Cancer Institute study, led by Dr Jennifer Grandis, the injections were well-tolerated, and the tumours which were being targeted by the treatment disappeared or shrank considerably in more than a quarter of the patients. The British Dental Health Foundation has welcomed the latest development in treating this deadly disease. Chief executive Dr Nigel Carter said: 'These new findings show that this new DNA therapy can have the potential as both a safe and effective advanced cancer treatment. One of the major problems with mouth cancer is that it often presents in late stages, significantly reducing survival – so a late stage treatment is particularly welcome. 'Head and neck cancers have a strong association with environmental and lifestyle risk factors including smoking tobacco, alcohol consumption and the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV). 'Research has recently suggested that the HPV virus, transmitted via oral sex, could soon become the most common cause of mouth cancer.' Cancers caused [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-07T09:42:31-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Laser and nanoparticles blow up cancer cells

Source: news.softpedia.com/ Author: Tudor Vieru In a new approach to fighting cancer cells, or cells ridden by several other types of diseases as well, researchers managed to combine the powers of lasers and nanoparticles most efficiently. The method relies on using short bursts of laser light to produce small explosions from gold particles that have been placed inside the targeted cells beforehand. The blasts, which cause no ill-effects to surrounding cells, are highly capable of dismembering the cancerous ones, acting like a “jackhammer” on their targets, and pounding relentlessly, LiveScience reports. Basically, the active elements in this therapy are nanobubbles, which form as the gold particles are subjected to intense, but short, laser pulses. The science group, which is based at the Rice University, was able to determine that the intensity of the lasers could be tuned in two ways, resulting in two different results. The end result could be either clear, bright and small bubbles, that were harmless, or larger explosions that took place inside the cell, which dismembered it. “Single-cell targeting is one of the most touted advantages of nanomedicine, and our approach delivers on that promise with a localized effect inside an individual cell. The idea is to spot and treat unhealthy cells early, before a disease progresses to the point of making people extremely ill,” says RU physicist Dmitri Lapotko. He was also the author of a new study detailing the method, which appears online, in the January 25 issue of the respected scientific journal Nanotechnology. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-07T09:35:35-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Harmless virus could be an answer to cancer

Source: www.dailyfinance.com Author: Melly Alazraki You'd think that infecting a cancer patient with a virus would be the last thing a doctor would want to do. But what if it was a virus that attacks and kills cancer cells? That's exactly the premise that led to the founding of Oncolytics Biotech, a Calgary-based biotechnology company. It's about to begin Phase 3 trials that could pave the way for a marketable cancer treatment based on this technology in two years, says CEO Dr. Brad Thompson (pictured) in an interview with DailyFinance. "We're working on a product that is widely applicable to quite a few indications of cancer and is based on a naturally occurring virus that's commonly found in the environment and that happens to have a preference of growing in cancer cells as opposed to growing in normal tissue." It's called a reovirus (short for Respiratory Enteric Orphan virus), and it's a type which most people pick up by age 12 through inhalation or contact that causes few or no health problems. But when the virus enters cancer cells, it kills them. On-Off Switch Viruses, naturally, prefer cells that can't fight them off. And these cancer cells all have a common characteristic: They have a certain growth pathway, called the Ras pathway, turned on. "If a cell doesn't have that pathway turned on, nothing happens, so it's like an on-off switch for the virus's growth," Thompson explained. In the human body, very few normal cells have that Ras pathway turned [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-06T12:11:49-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Survey: use of internet to find health information increases

Source: www.medscape.com Author: staff More than half of Americans looked up health information on the Internet last year, U.S. government researchers reported on Tuesday. But only 5% used email to communicate with their doctors, the survey by the National Center for Health Statistics found. The survey included 7,192 adults aged 18 to 64 questioned between January and June 2009. During that period, 51% "had used the Internet to look up health information during the past 12 months," the center, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement. "Among adults aged 18-64, women were more likely than men to look up health information on the Internet (58% versus 43%) and were also more likely to use online chat groups to learn about health topics (4% versus 2.5%)." The survey found 6% of adults requested a refill of a prescription on the Internet, and almost 3% had made an appointment with a healthcare provider in the previous 12 months using the Internet. Other researchers have found doctors are reluctant to use the Internet or email to communicate with patients because of concerns about privacy as well as confusion about how to charge for their time.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-06T08:54:51-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|