Source: Journal of Nuclear Medicine (October 2008, Vol. 49:10, pp. 1593-1599)
Author: Dr. Andrew Scott et al.

Led by Dr. Andrew Scott, director of the Centre for PET at Austin Hospital in Melbourne, the newest research shows that PET provides important prognostic information in a large proportion of patients with untreated head and neck cancer, and detects additional sites of disease.

The prospective study, published in the October issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine (October 2008, Vol. 49:10, pp. 1593-1599), was conducted at three Australian PET centers between December 17, 2003, and June 3, 2005. The criteria for enrollment included patients who previously had untreated carcinoma of the nasal cavity, nasopharynx, oral cavity, oropharynx, hypopharynx, or larynx, or had metastatic disease involving cervical lymph nodes from an unknown primary. Patients underwent examination under anesthesia and biopsy to confirm their diagnosis of cancer.

Contrast-enhanced CT of the neck was required within six weeks of the PET scan. Patients fasted for a minimum of six hours before the PET study and received a dose of 120-440 MBq FDG intravenously. After a minimum uptake period of 45 minutes, researchers acquired PET data from the skull vertex to at least the lower abdomen.

Treatment plans

Before receiving the results of the PET scans, researchers asked referring clinicians to document their management plan for the patient, as if PET findings were not available, but with access to all other clinical and conventional imaging results. The management plan provided information on options such as surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or a combination of each.

Once clinicians had the chance to view results from PET scans, they were asked to update their cancer treatment strategies in lieu of the additional information, detailing to what degree, if any, the original management plan was changed.

Researchers analyzed 71 patients with a median age of 56 years, ranging from 35 years to 86 years. Among the 49 men and 22 women, a total of 156 lesions were detected in the pre-PET evaluation.

Lesion detection

Forty patients were evaluated with standalone PET, while 31 patients underwent PET/CT scans. PET detected a total of 171 lesions, of which 160 lesions were consistent with malignancy and 11 lesions were equivocal. PET also detected 43 additional lesions in 28 patients (39%). Nine of those lesions were classified as primary lesions, 27 were regional lymph nodes, and seven lesions were distant metastases.

Primary lesions were not detected in 15 patients during pre-PET evaluation. Seven of the primary lesions detected only by PET relate to seven of the 15 patients (47%). The other two additional primary lesions detected by PET were interpreted as second primary lesions in two patients. In both cases, the first primary lesion was detected prior to PET imaging.

In 15 patients, 28 lesions were detected on the pre-PET evaluation, but not detected on the follow-up PET scan. Of those 28 lesions, five were classified as primary lesions, 22 were considered regional lymph nodes, and one was a possible distant metastatic lesion.

Altered plans

After clinicians reviewed PET images, management plans were altered on the basis of the PET results in 24 patients (34%), with a 95% confidence interval. PET detected additional lesions in 19 of those 24 patients. In the remaining five patients, radiation volume was changed in three cases; in the remaining two cases, the radiation dose was changed and chemotherapy halted.

The study “demonstrates that PET has a significant impact on patient management and predicts outcomes in patients with previously untreated head and neck cancer,” the authors wrote. “PET scans resulted in a clear management change in 24 of the 71 patients (34%) … A high or medium management impact was also observed in a third of patients.”

Primary tumors

PET did not identify a small number of primary tumors, most likely because of prior removal at biopsy or because the lesion was below the limits of resolution of any imaging modality. In nine patients, previously unknown primary lesions were identified; two patients had a second primary detected, and seven of the 15 patients (46.7%) with unknown primaries and metastatic lymph node disease had primary tumors identified.

The authors cited one limitation of the study. “Different subgroups of head and neck cancer (base of tongue, oropharynx, etc.) are managed differently,” they wrote, “and one limitation of the study was that the patient numbers in each of the subgroups were small, preventing individual analyses.”

They also noted that their results for head and neck cancer were comparable to data from the U.S. National Oncologic PET Registry (NOPR), which found that treatment plans were changed in 36% of cancer cases, particularly for prostate, pancreatic, and ovarian cancer patients, after clinicians reviewed PET images.

Source: www.therapeuticsdaily.com
Author: staff

A new requirement that girls as young as 11 be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus before they can become legal U.S. residents is unfair, immigration advocates say. The federal rule added Gardasil to the list of vaccinations that female immigrants ages 11 to 26 must get before they can obtain “green cards.”

The series of three shots over six months protects against the strains of the human papillomavirus blamed for most cases of cervical cancer and genital warts. But the vaccine is one of the most expensive on the market and controversial.

“This is a huge economic, social and cultural barrier to immigrants who are coming into America,” said Tuyet Duong, senior staff attorney for the Immigration and Immigrant Rights Program at the Asian American Justice Center.

At a cost of $400, Gardasil places an added burden on green card applicants already paying more than $1,000 in form fees and hundreds of dollars for mandatory medical exams, advocates say.

The mandate potentially affects tens of thousands of women and girls annually. More than 200,000 women and girls ages 10 to 29 were granted legal permanent resident status each of the past two years. Past efforts to require the vaccine for American girls has stirred emotional debate and complaints that such mandates intrude on family decisions about sex education.

In Texas, lawmakers last year fought off an order by Gov. Rick Perry requiring the shots for sixth grade girls amid questions about vaccine’s safety, efficacy and cost. Similar programs were proposed in many states, but only Virginia has signed such a mandate into law.

“What surprised us the most is that this requirement is for immigrant girls and women, but not for the general population of natural born citizens,” said Jessica Arons, director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress.

Despite objections by immigrant advocates that the law is invasive and unfair, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the agency must enforce it. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the Gardasil vaccine, made by New Jersey-based pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., Inc., in 2006. Then last year, an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the vaccinations for girls 11 or 12.

For U.S. citizens, the committee’s recommendations serve only to provide guidance on immunization issues. But a 1996 change to America’s immigration laws required anyone seeking permanent residency to get all the vaccinations recommended by the committee.

Jon Abramson, who chaired the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said the panel never intended to require Gardasil for immigrants and wasn’t aware its recommendation would become mandatory.

Merck spokeswoman Amy Rose said the drug company did not lobby the government to require the vaccine for female immigrants and that it wasn’t aware of the mandate until after the rule took effect.

The other new vaccines required are for rotavirus, hepatitis A, meningitis and shingles for those older than 60. Routine childhood vaccines such as measles, mumps, and chickenpox are already required.

Source: www.eurekalert.com
Author: staff

A new analysis finds considerable disparities in survival related to race and socio-economic status among patients with head and neck cancer. Published in the November 15, 2008 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study indicates that earlier diagnosis and greater access to treatment could improve outcomes for these cancers among African Americans and the poor.

A number of studies have examined disparities in cancer survival among different groups to help identify interventions to improve patient outcomes. To investigate factors that impact survival from head and neck cancer, Dr. Leonidas Koniaris and colleagues at the University of Miami School of Medicine reviewed all head and neck cancer cases in Florida between 1998 and 2002. By mining information from the Florida Cancer Data System and the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration dataset, they were able to accumulate data on diagnoses, comorbid conditions, and procedures performed during every hospitalization or outpatient visit among 20,915 head and neck cancer patients during that time.

The review found poorer outcomes were associated with race, poverty, age, gender, tumor site and stage, treatment type, and a history of smoking and alcohol consumption.

Regarding race, the average survival time among Hispanics was 47 months, compared with 40 months among Caucasians and 21 months among African Americans. African American patients were diagnosed at a younger age and presented with more advanced disease compared with Caucasians. For all tumor stages, African American patients had a significantly shorter average survival time than Caucasians, regardless of poverty level. Treatments also differed between these two races: Caucasians were more likely than African Americans to have undergone surgery (45 percent vs. 32 percent), while African Americans were more likely than Caucasians to receive chemotherapy (26 percent vs. 19 percent) and radiation (66 percent vs. 56 percent). However, even among patients who received surgery, African Americans had a shorter survival time than Caucasians.

When assessing socioeconomic status, the investigators found that patients living in communities with poverty levels exceeding 15 percent were diagnosed with head and neck cancer at a significantly younger age, more frequently diagnosed with advanced disease, and had lower average survival was lower across all age groups. Average survival time was significantly shorter in patients from the areas with the highest poverty rates irrespective of what type of therapy was received.

The authors conclude that racial disparities continue to exist in head and neck cancer survival. Socio-economic inequities are also evident in head and neck cancer survival, even when the poor receive treatment for their disease.

“Earlier diagnosis, particularly in those from low socio-economic status groups and amongst African American patients, is needed to improve outcomes,” the authors wrote.

Source:
“African American and poor patients have a dramatically worse prognosis for head and neck cancer: an examination of 20,915 patients.” Manuel A. Molina, Michael C. Cheung, Eduardo A. Perez, Margaret M. Byrne, Dido Franceschi, Frederick L. Moffat, Alan S. Livingstone, W. Jarrard Goodwin, Juan C. Gutierrez, and Leonidas G. Koniaris. CANCER; Published Online: October 06, 2008 (DOI: 10.1002/cncr.23889); Print Issue Date: November 15, 2008.

Source: www.nature.com
Author: Alison Abbott

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine honors three Europeans who discovered viruses that cause deadly diseases, and whose findings have led to major medical advances.

Harald zur Hausen, former director of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany, was honoured for his work on the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer. A protective vaccine for this virus has now been developed and is in widespread use. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier share the other half of the prize for their discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1), which causes AIDS.

Zur Hausen was the only one of the three who was at home when the famous call from Stockholm came. Montagnier, now director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, was working in the Côte d’Ivoire. Barré-Sinoussi, who is at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, was in Cambodia. The Nobel committee had been unable to contact either before the time of the announcement.
Search for the AIDS virus

Barré-Sinoussi — who, accompanied only by her mobile phone, found herself overwhelmed by the event — becomes the 36th woman to win a Nobel prize of any kind, compared with a list of 745 male laureates. She worked with Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute, from the beginning of the hunt for the virus causing AIDS in the early 1980s. The pair identified the virus, which they originally called LAV (lymphadenopathy associated virus), in 1983.

A bitter battle for credit soon began, with Robert Gallo of the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, claiming to be the true discoverer. But in 1987, the heads of state of France and the United States brokered an agreement to share the benefits of the discovery, and the researchers had apparently buried the hatchet by 1990. Many believed that the Nobel prize could not be awarded for this field of research — despite its importance — while tempers were still high.

The Nobel committee has now made its position clear in an announcement that includes a list of who discovered what, and when. It says the discovery of Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier “was accepted by the research community and resulted in an explosion of scientific breakthroughs”. It then refers to Gallo’s “detection of a novel … virus from a vast number of patients with AIDS or pre-AIDS in 1984 … [which] showed considerable similarities with LAV-1″.

The work of the French scientists has led to the development of diagnostic tools and blood screening agents that have helped to fight the spread of the disease, particularly in western countries. It has also allowed the development of drugs to fight the virus in different ways. Combinations of these drugs have dramatically increased life expectancy.
Elegant experiments

Zur Hausen is Germany’s 79th Nobel laureate in the sciences, and is widely considered a modest and gentle man who raised research standards at the DKFZ during his time there between 1983 and 2003.

In the early 1970s, the reigning hypothesis held that it was a herpes simplex virus that caused cervical cancer, a disease already believed to be largely sexually transmitted. But the young zur Hausen preferred to trust his own eyes — and he failed to find the herpes simplex virus in cervical cancer cells. He fixated instead on the papilloma virus, ignoring the scorn of many colleagues who believed the virus to be nothing more than a generator of skin warts.

“Virologists, and for sure all gynaecologists, thought his idea about the papilloma virus was very strange,” says virologist Herbert Pfister, a former colleague who is now at the University of Cologne. “But he carried through his theory in a determinedly logical way, not caring about the controversy he was raising.”

In a series of elegant experiments over the next decade — during which he moved between universities in Germany, settling in 1977 at the University of Freiburg — zur Hausen identified many different types of HPV, which he linked to different diseases. In 1983 he described HPV-16, which occurs in more than half of all human cervical cancers as well as other anogenital cancers. A year later came HPV-18, which accounts for a further 25% of cases.

“His work has directly influenced our daily lives — for years we have been able to identify women at high-risk of developing cervical cancer,” says Marion Kiechle-Bahat, head of the department of gynaecology at the Technical University of Munich, who studied under zur Hausen in Freiburg. “And now, as a direct result of his work, we have a vaccine to protect young girls, before they start to have sex.”

Roughly 500,000 women worldwide now receive the vaccine each year. The disease is fatal in around one-third of cases, and the vaccine is expected to significantly reduce these figures.

Source: www.marketwatch.com
Author: staff

Head and neck surgery is a diverse regional subspecialty, whose central focus is treatment of oncologic disorders of the neck. “Neck dissection is relevant to treatment of such disorders as squamous cell cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract, tongue cancer, laryngeal cancer, thyroid cancer, salivary gland cancer, and skin cancers of the head/neck region, including melanoma,” explained William I. Kuhel, MD, the Director of the Head and Neck Service, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, and Associate Professor of Clinical Otorhinolaryngology at Weill Cornell Medical School.

“For many years, the radical neck dissection was the standard operation for removal of metastatic disease involving the lymph nodes in the neck, but that operation evolved into what are referred to as modified and selective neck dissections, which spare some of the important structures in the neck,” said Dr. Kuhel.

Salvatore M. Caruana, MD, the Director of the Division of Head and Neck Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, explained further. “The trend these days is to do smaller operations to get the same effect. Over the years it has become clear that certain areas of a radical neck dissection do not have to be included for diseases at specific levels. Our knowledge base has allowed us to make smaller operations to address the same problems.” Greater experience has also allowed for more common use of adjuvant therapies, such as radiation and chemotherapy, he added. “We may sometimes simply remove the largest mass in the neck and give chemoradiotherapy for the rest.”

Physicians interested in learning the latest developments in head and neck surgery should view this webcast, which features Drs. Caruana and Kuhel, both leaders in the field, who represent the campuses of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

“Although advancements in imaging often enable us to more accurately assess the status of the neck, high-tech intraoperative technology is really not a driver in the discussion of this particular topic,” said Dr. Kuhel. “Our progress has been based on a better understanding of patterns of lymphatic spread to the lymph nodes in the neck, advances in surgical skill, and better imaging, and these factors have enabled us to progress to the application of selective neck dissections, which spare certain lymph node groups in the neck.”

“We have more accurate staging because of our better imaging techniques,” Dr. Caruana said, “and, because of our historical data, we better understand what is and is not necessary. These selective operations hopefully lead to less postoperative debility from the operation.”

The neck has been mapped out into six distinct levels, useful when comparing results from different tumor types. Historical data show, for example, that a tumor of the supraglottic larynx might generally spread to levels 2, 3 and 4. “Over the years we have learned that we don’t have to perform a neck dissection to levels 1-5 when addressing levels 2-4 will do, since that is almost certainly where the tumor is going to be,” Dr. Caruana explained. “And that means a smaller operation, less morbidity for the patient, and greater preservation of normal, unaffected tissue.”

Despite important advances that have been made in reducing the morbidity from the surgical treatment of head and neck cancer, the mortality for head and neck squamous cell cancer has not improved during the past thirty years. “Surgeons have taken satisfaction in the fact that the functional outcomes are better even though the cure rate hasn’t been improved,” Dr. Kuhel said. “There have been huge advances in terms of reconstruction with microvascular free flaps.”

New surgical approaches, new chemotherapeutic agents, and greater understanding of the molecular mechanisms of disease are all being utilized to try to improve the outcomes of patients with head and neck cancer. One new approach is natural orifice surgery, as explained by Dr. Caruana. “We are doing transoral laser microsurgery where we take certain tumors out through the mouth, obviating the need for a tracheostomy. Patients can usually swallow sooner than with a big open procedure, and we can sometimes lower the dose of radiation therapy, or even eliminate the need for radiation completely.” Another hopeful area is the ongoing development of new chemotherapeutic agents, as well as new regimens using molecular targeted therapy (MTT). “MTT cells are designed to correct a molecular defect in the tumor,” explained Dr. Caruana. “For instance, one of the major defects in the case of medullary thyroid cancer is a defect in the tyrosine kinase receptor. If you give MTT that blocks the function of that receptor, you have now in effect eliminated the fact that there is this defect.”

Dr. Kuhel agreed. “The answer in terms of cancer is going to come from a better understanding of the molecular basis of the disease. When I was in medical school I heard lectures on the treatment of stomach ulcers, which discussed surgery, the cutting of certain nerves in the stomach, debate about whether it should be done endoscopically, etc. Ultimately, however, our knowledge improved to the point where we now know that these ulcers were caused by an infection. I believe that eventually when we understand the molecular mechanisms of cancer, head and neck surgery will become very anachronistic.”

Source: OCF Press Release
Author: John Pohl

David Nasto was the kind of person many of us wish we could be. He was a surfer. A snowboarder. A kayaker. A bicycler. An artist. A world traveler. A free spirit. Not content to simply be a devoted fan of the Grateful Dead, he also designed their album covers. Simply put, David Nasto loved life, and he lived it on his own terms.

David Nasto was also his sister Susan’s hero. So when David developed oral cancer in 2005, Susan decided to learn as much about the disease as she could. And when David passed away the following year, she decided to honor her brother do by doing what she could to help prevent others from suffering the way he suffered.

“When David was diagnosed with oral cancer, I was shocked,” said Susan. “He was so athletic, so healthy, and he had never smoked a cigarette in his life. I didn’t think oral cancer struck people like him.” Susan tried to learn as much as she could about the disease, spending much of her free time doing online research. During that process she discovered the website of the Oral Cancer Foundation. “I learned a lot about oral cancer, but the most important thing I learned is the importance of early detection. So when David died, I wanted to find a way to raise money to help increase awareness of the need for everyone to get checked for oral cancer on a regular basis.”

After much study and contemplation, Susan decided that she would organize the David Nasto Memorial Walk for Oral Cancer, and donate all of the funds raised to the Oral Cancer Foundation. The first annual walk took place on September 27, 2008 just outside Andover, New Jersey, where David and Susan were raised. Susan started organizing the event in March, relying heavily on advice provided by Oral Cancer Foundation founder Brian Hill. “There’s no way I could have done this without Brian,” said Susan. “I learned so much from him about oral cancer, and about how to orchestrate an event like this. He guided me through every step of the way.”

And there were certainly a lot of steps involved. The event kicked off with a 9:00 am registration, where 85 registrants were given special t-shirts. For the next two hours, free oral cancer exams were conducted by three dentists. Then it was time for the walk, a two-mile stroll through scenic countryside in an area known as Perona Farms. Following the walk, lunch was served, including baked ziti, fruit, and hamburgers and hot dogs grilled by Susan’s husband, Harry Lauria. After lunch, an inspirational talk was given by Eva Grayzel, a 10-year oral cancer survivor, and five other oral cancer survivors in attendance were also introduced. The event concluded with a raffle of various gift cards, and an iPod was awarded to the person who recruited the most sponsors. All told, over $10,000 was raised, quite a feat for a first-time event.

Susan, who helps people for a living through her “On the Move” errand service, is quick to acknowledge the many people who helped her make this event such a success. Local stores donated all of the food as well as the raffled gift cards. CBS Outdoor donated a billboard that promoted the event for three months. Johnson & Johnson, where Susan’s aunt is employed, donated $2,500 in cash plus all of the t-shirts. And other family members also got into the act. Susan’s 91-year-old grandmother, who lives at the New Jersey shore where David Nasto once was a lifeguard, raised over $700 from the beach community through a letter-writing campaign. Susan’s mother made flyers for the event, and Susan’s sister who is 4 ½ months pregnant, flew in from Texas to work the registration desk. And Susan’s husband Harry and 15-year-old son Kevin provided much moral support throughout the entire planning process.

Susan is already thinking about her second annual walk, and she’s set a goal of raising twice as much money as the inaugural event raised. Fortunately, she’s already had several people volunteer to help her attain that goal. And speaking of volunteering, Susan has volunteered to help the Oral Cancer Foundation counsel other people who are organizing walks and other fund-raising events.

David Nasto was clearly an inspiration to his sister. And Susan Lauria is proving to be just as big of an inspiration to others, particularly to those who care deeply about reducing the incidence and impact of oral cancer. Brian Hill from OCF stated that “Susan’s passion was evident from the onset. It was clearly a labor of love, but beyond that, it was the realization that she personally could be part of positive change in the world while memorializing her brother. It think that her example, her ability to turn a tragedy into a positive that will impact others around her, raise awareness about a disease that we hear far too little about, and help fund outreach efforts that are remote from her local community through the funds donated to OCF, show her to be the kind of altruistic person person that we can all look up to. When our focus moves from the self to others, mountains can be moved. It was a privilege to be associated with her both personally and through the foundation in this effort. She is a remarkable lady.

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com
Author: staff

The American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology has selected Peggy Wiederholt, R.N., as the inaugural winner of the ASTRO Nurse Excellence Award, which is awarded to a registered nurse who goes above and beyond the normal standards of nursing practice. Ms. Wiederholt was presented with her award, a $1,000 grant, at the nurses’ welcome and orientation luncheon held Sunday, September 21, 2008, at 12:00 p.m. during ASTRO’s 50th Annual Meeting in Boston.

Ms. Wiederholt is the head and neck oncology nurse coordinator at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center in Madison, Wis., where she is responsible for bridging communication between patients and providers, assisting patient needs, coordinating care, managing chemoradiation-induced symptoms and side effects, and providing patient, family and staff education. She has worked in the University of Wisconsin System for over 25 years, the last five of which were in the Radiation Oncology Department.

During her time as a radiation oncology nurse, Ms. Wiederholt co-founded “Heads Up,” a head and neck cancer patient support group at the Carbone Cancer Center and now serves as the group’s co-director. In January 2007 she served as a member of the steering committee for the first multidisciplinary head and neck cancer symposium sponsored by ASTRO, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Head and Neck Society. Ms. Wiederholt has also co-authored a cancer patient handbook titled, “The Write Track, a Personal Health Tracker for Cancer Patients.”

For the past two years, Ms. Wiederholt has served as chair of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinic’s annual head and neck cancer awareness week that includes free public oral screenings and community and staff education on head and neck cancers. She also has helped organize the first and second annual University of Wisconsin head and neck cancer golf outing and dinner, which recognizes the courage of head and neck cancer survivors and their families.

“Peggy is the epitome of a great nurse and I am thrilled that she was selected as the first recipient of the nursing award,” said Linda Filipczak, R.N., B.S.N., M.B.A., chair of ASTRO’s Nursing Committee. “It’s inspiring how she is able to devote so much time and attention to her patients while at the same time is able to find time to participate in professional head and neck cancer meetings and numerous community service projects.”

ASTRO is the largest radiation oncology society in the world, with more than 9,000 members who specialize in treating patients with radiation therapies. As the leading organization in radiation oncology, biology and physics, the Society is dedicated to improving patient care through education, clinical practice, advancement of science and advocacy.

Source: www.canada.com
Author: Maggie Fox

A simple screen of proteins in human saliva was able to accurately detect a common type of oral cancer, a finding that may lead to a painless new diagnostic test, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

The test can predict the mouth cancer in 93 percent of cases, a team at the University of California Los Angeles reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

It is among the first of a new set of spit-based diagnostic tests expected to arise from a protein map of human saliva developed by researchers at UCLA and other centers. The map, published in March, identified all 1,116 unique proteins found in human saliva glands.

The latest findings focus on oral squamous cell carcinoma, which affects more than 300,000 people worldwide. More than 90 percent of cancers that start in the mouth are squamous cell cancers, according to the American Cancer Society.

Researchers at UCLA’s School of Dentistry collected saliva samples from 64 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma and compared them with samples from 64 healthy patients.

They found that five protein biomarkers — M2BP, MRP14, CD59, profilin and catalase — predicted oral cancer 93 percent of the time.

“We have demonstrated a new approach for cancer biomarker discovery using saliva proteomics,” said Shen Hu, who led the research. The UCLA team is developing devices to detect these markers that could be studied in human trials.

“I believe a test measuring these biomarkers will come to a point of regular use in the future,” Hu said in a statement.

Earlier this year, a team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said it was working on a saliva test that could spot diseases like mouth and throat cancer in heavy smokers, heavy drinkers and others at high risk. They identified more than half of the people in the study who had cancer.

About 13,000 people in the United States die of cancers of the head and neck and about 55,000 develop these cancers each year, according to the American Academy of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery.

Source: New York Times (nytimes.com)
Author: Tara Parker-Pope

Many people gobble big doses of vitamin C in hopes of boosting their immune system and warding off illness. But new research shows that in people with cancer, the vitamin may do more harm than good.

Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York studied the effects of vitamin C on cancer cells. As it turns out, the vitamin seems to protect not just healthy cells, but cancer cells, too. The findings were published today in the journal Cancer Research.

“The use of vitamin C supplements could have the potential to reduce the ability of patients to respond to therapy,” said Dr. Mark Heaney, an associate attending physician at the cancer center.

Dr. Heaney and his colleagues tested five different chemotherapy drugs on cancer cells in the laboratory. Some of the cells were first treated with vitamin C. In every case, including a test of the powerful new cancer drug Gleevec, chemotherapy did not work as well if cells had been exposed to vitamin C. The chemotherapy agents killed 30 to 70 percent fewer cancer cells when the cells were treated with the vitamin.

A second set of experiments implanted cancer cells in mice. They found that the tumors grew more rapidly in mice that were given cancer cells pretreated with vitamin C.

The researchers found that just like healthy cells, cancer cells also benefit from vitamin C. The vitamin appeared to repair a cancer cell’s damaged mitochondria, the energy center of cells. When the mitochondria is injured, it sends signals that force the cell to die, but vitamin C interrupts that process.

“Vitamin C appears to protect the mitochondria from extensive damage, thus saving the cell,” Dr. Heaney said. “And whether directly or not, all anticancer drugs work to disrupt the mitochondria to push cell death.”

Dr. Heaney measured the buildup of vitamin C levels in cells and said that the levels of vitamin C used in the experiments were similar to those that would result if a patient took large doses of the vitamin in supplement form. Earlier research at the cancer center showed that vitamin C seems to accumulate within cancer cells more than in normal cells.

Patients should eat a healthy diet that includes foods rich in vitamin C, Dr. Heaney said, but it’s the large doses of vitamin C in tablet form that are worrisome.

Source: news.biocompare.com
Author: staff

Snack-sized quantities of walnuts slow cancer growth in mice, reports a Marshall University pilot study published in the current issue of the peer-reviewed journal Nutrition and Cancer. Researcher W. Elaine Hardman, Ph.D., of Marshall’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine said the study was designed to determine whether mice that got part of their calories by eating walnuts had slower breast cancer growth than a group eating a diet more typical of the American diet.

“When we fed the mice the walnuts, the growth rate of the tumors they had was dramatically suppressed,” Hardman said.

The mice ate a diet in which 18.5 percent of the daily calories — the equivalent of two servings for humans — came from walnuts. Tumors in the walnut-fed group took twice as long to double in size as tumors in the control group, the article reports. The study is believed to be the first to look at the impact of walnut consumption on cancer growth.

“It’s always very good to find something that will slow the growth of tumors without being toxic chemotherapy,” said Hardman, who has spent 15 years studying the role of diet in cancer.

Walnuts have at least three components that could account for their cancer-slowing effect, Hardman said. They are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to slow cancer growth. They also include antioxidants and components called phytosterols, both of which have shown cancer-slowing effects in other studies.

While the pilot study was only designed to determine whether — not why — walnuts had a tumor-suppressing effect, Hardman said research as a whole is suggesting that Americans need to get more of their fat calories from fats rich in omega-3 fatty acids and fewer fat calories from saturated fat or foods high in omega-6 fatty acids.

In addition to walnuts, other good sources of omega-3 fatty acids are fish and canola and flaxseed oils, she said. Medicine is increasingly looking at dietary changes as a way to reduce cancer, Hardman said.

“We’re beginning to understand that your diet probably contributes to one-third to two-thirds of all cancers that develop, and making dietary changes to prevent cancer could do more to reduce the deaths from cancer than chemotherapy to treat cancer,” she said.

“Changing our habits to reduce our risk not only of cancer but also of other chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, could reduce our health costs that are eating us up and provide better lives for a lot of people,” she said. “I think in the future — and probably the near future — our diet, and making dietary changes, is going to become the biggest weapon for fighting cancer.”

The project was funded through grants from the American Institute for Cancer Research and the California Walnut Commission, neither of which had input on the interpretation or reporting of the findings.

Original Source: Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine