messenger RNA

Saliva: The next frontier in cancer detection

Source: knowablemagazine.org Author: Matías A. Loewy In the late 1950s, dentist and US Navy Capt. Kirk C. Hoerman, then a young man in his 30s, attempted to answer a bold question: Might the saliva of prostate cancer patients have different characteristics from that of healthy people? Could it contain traces of a disease that’s so far away from the mouth? Without wasting more of their own saliva on elaborate discussion, Hoerman and his colleagues from the department of dental research at the Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Illinois, got down to work. They analyzed samples from more than 200 patients and healthy controls, and found that the saliva of patients with untreated prostate cancer showed a significant increase in the levels of enzymes called acid phosphatases. Writing in 1959 in the journal Cancer, the researchers then made a prescient reflection: that it may be valuable to observe discrete biochemical changes in tissues distant from the site of tumor origin. More than 60 years later, the idea that saliva analysis can be used to detect different types of cancer is gaining traction in the scientific community. In the specialized literature, papers containing the keywords “diagnosis,” “cancer” and “saliva” grew more than tenfold over the past two decades, from 26 in 2001 to 117 in 2011, 183 in 2016 and 319 in 2021, according to the PubMed database, a search engine for biomedical research articles. The appeal of this approach is obvious. Although cancer can be diagnosed through tissue biopsy, that [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-03-16T08:58:48-07:00March, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

Chemical changes to peptide siRNA-carrier enhance gene silencing for future cancer drugs

Source: web.musc.edu Author: Caroline Wallace MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researchers are exploring the use of peptide carriers for the delivery of small RNA drugs as a novel treatment for cancer. The team’s recent work, published online March 19 in the Molecular Therapy — Nucleic Acids journal, lays the foundation for developing a clinically relevant peptide carrier RNAi-based drug treatment strategy for human oral cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, the estimated risk of developing oral cancer in the U.S. is 1 in 60 for men and 1 in 140 for women. Cancer therapies face multiple challenges, including off-target side effects and low efficacy. RNAi-based therapeutics have great potential to overcome these specific treatment challenges. Andrew Jakymiw, Ph.D., who is also an associate professor in the Oral Health Sciences Department at MUSC, focuses on the study of RNA interference (RNAi)-based therapies for oral cancer. RNAi is a method of gene silencing that specifically targets, or tags, messenger RNA (mRNA) for degradation. mRNA contains the genetic code needed to make proteins. Small interfering RNA (siRNA) are the pieces of RNA that can bind to specific regions on mRNA that stop proteins from being made. Scientists are figuring out how to use this to target and silence disease-causing genes. Decades of research have shown that certain proteins are overexpressed in cancer and drive cancer cell growth. The goal of the RNAi drug treatment strategy is to “turn off” the proteins that promote cancer development. Jakymiw said that although the principle is biologically [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-05-25T14:37:20-07:00May, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Personalized vaccines: the new frontier in cancer treatment

Source: www.wildcat.arizona.edu Author: Udbhav Venkataraman Exciting results from a new clinical study showed that a personalized vaccine combined with an immunotherapy drug had a promising response rate in patients with advanced incurable head and neck cancer. Dr. Julie Bauman, chief of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine — Tucson, led a phase one clinical trial with the pharmaceutical company, Moderna, to test the combined use of personalized vaccines created from tumor DNA with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab. Of the 10 patients involved in the study, five of the them responded to the treatment, meaning 30% of the cancer mass had decreased. Furthermore, two of the patients completely responded, meaning that cancer could not be detected. Molly Cassidy is one of those two patients. What was initially determined to be a stress-related ear-ache turned out to be an aggressive case of squamous cell carcinoma, a form of head and neck cancer. Head and neck cancers impact the linings of the mouth and throat. Risk factors for this disease include alcohol consumption, smoking and other environmental carcinogens that we are all exposed to. It can also be caused by human papillomavirus (HPV). Cassidy did not fit this profile at all. “I’m HPV-negative. I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. I’m a woman. I was the first person in my family to have cancer. I was 35 when I got my diagnosis,” Cassidy said. “I was also in really good health … To hear that I had cancer was [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-12-09T06:51:37-07:00December, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

UArizona clinical trail expanding after early results with personalized cancer vaccine

Source: www.kold.com Author: Karly Tinsley Despite the pandemic, groundbreaking research has not stopped at the University of Arizona. Researchers with the UArizona Health Sciences are working to help treat cancer by using personalized vaccines. It works in combination with the immuno-therapy drug Pembrolizumab. According to the UArizona, Julie E. Bauman, MD, MPH, deputy director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center and a professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson, presented preliminary data on the first 10 patients with head and neck cancer, seven of which were treated at Banner – University Medicine, the clinical partner for the UArizona Cancer Center. Five of the 10 patients experienced a clinical response to the personalized cancer vaccine, and two patients had a complete response after the treatment (no detectable disease present). Molly Cassidy is one of the 10 who went through the trial. “I was a young healthy woman, so it was a big shock to get diagnosed,” said Cassidy. She was first diagnosed with oral cancer after complaining of an ear ache. Dentists initially found a tumor in her tongue that was later identified as cancer. She then went through treatment for the tumor, but her cancer came back aggressively. “I had tumors throughout my neck, in my lungs, I was really really ill,” said Cassidy. At this time she was seeing Dr. Bauman, who said they both understood her chances of survival were slim at that point. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-11-21T10:33:28-07:00November, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Researchers report early success using saliva to detect oral cancer

Source: www.nih.gov Author: press release Scientists funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, part of the National Institutes of Health, reported today taking a major step forward in using saliva to detect oral cancer. As published in the current issue of Clinical Cancer Research, the scientists found they could measure for elevated levels of four distinct cancer-associated molecules in saliva and distinguish with 91 percent accuracy between healthy people and those diagnosed with oral squamous cell carcinoma. This so-called "proof-of-principle" study marks the first report in the scientific literature that distinct patterns of "messenger RNA" not only are measurable in saliva but can indicate a developing tumor. Messenger RNA (mRNA) is the molecular intermediate between gene and protein, serving as a chemical record that an individual gene has been expressed. According to David Wong, D.M.D., D.M.Sc., a scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Dentistry and senior author on the paper, it may be possible with further refinement of the test, possibly by including additional cancer-linked mRNAs, to attain the necessary 99 to 100 percent accuracy of commercial diagnostic tests for oral squamous cell carcinoma, the sixth most common cancer in the United States. Wong noted that currently no biochemical or genetic diagnostic tests are commercially available for oral cancer. He also noted that the RNA patterns in saliva may be informative for other cancers and common diseases. "Saliva is a mirror of our blood," said Wong. "We're now conducting our initial [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-07-13T18:15:21-07:00July, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

A spitting image of health

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org Author: Susan Galdos Rinse and spit. Someday soon, doctors may join dentists in issuing these simple instructions. And before leaving the office, you might know whether you’re at risk for oral cancer. Additional tests on that same ptui may reveal whether you show signs of certain other cancers or diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Saliva — the frothy fluid that helps clean the mouth, digest food and fight tooth decay — carries many of the same proteins and other molecules found in blood and urine. Scientists have long been interested in mining a person’s mix of these compounds for clues to diagnosing diseases. Three years ago, these efforts got a boost when researchers completed a preliminary master list of the proteins found in spit — 1,166 of them. Since then, scientists have nearly doubled the length of the protein list, while identifying changes in the salivary protein profile that are linked to disease. Other labs are delving into genetic material found in human saliva, looking for variations in gene activity that might signal disease risk. Already, studies show that diseases such as breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s leave specific and identifiable signatures in saliva. Such biomarkers have also been found for Sjögren syndrome, an autoimmune condition that affects production of tears and saliva. And proteins known to be related to heart activity, including a handful whose levels are elevated during a heart attack, have also shown up in spittle. Such findings — combined with the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-11-06T10:34:31-07:00November, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Microarray technologies in the diagnosis and treatment of head and neck cancer

Source: emedicine.medscape.com Authors: Perminder S Parmar, MD et al. Introduction Since the draft sequence of the human genome was published in 2001 (Lander, 2001), the Cancer Genome Anatomy Project index of tumor genes has classified more than 40,000 genes directly or indirectly involved in one or more cancers (Strausberg, 2001; Strausberg, 2000). Conventional techniques of gene investigation in cancer rely on the identification of single genetic alterations associated with disease. This has proven to be both time consuming and cost ineffective. The introduction of complementary DNA (cDNA) microarray technology in 1995 (Schena, 1995) has helped to facilitate the identification and classification of DNA sequence information and the assignment of functions to these new genes by allowing investigators to analyze expression of thousands of genes simultaneously in a single experiment. Microarrays are a significant advance because they contain a very large number of genes and because of their small size. Therefore, microarrays are useful when one wants to survey a large number of genes quickly or when the study sample is small. Microarrays may be used to assay gene expression within a single sample or to compare gene expression in 2 different cell types or tissue samples, such as in healthy and diseased tissue. Because a microarray can be used to examine the expression of hundreds or thousands of genes at once, it promises to revolutionize the way gene expression is examined. Methods DNA microarrays are small solid supports onto which the sequences from thousands of different genes are attached at [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-11-06T21:36:37-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|