metastasis – Oral Cancer News

Stopping the spread: Targeting tumor metastasis

Source: www.newswise.com Author: staff The process of metastasis is when cancer cells gain motility and spread to other sites of the body. Because this is one of the main causes of cancer-related deaths, researchers have aimed to develop therapeutic strategies that can block metastasis. In a recent article published in Cell Reports, a team led by researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) describe how a cell signaling molecule called transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) can help oral cancer cells acquire such dangerous motility. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) occurs when cancer cells obtain more stem-like and invasive properties, and is induced by various signals and stimuli within the tumor microenvironment. The group focused on the signaling molecule TGF-β as its reported effects seem contradictory: TGF-β can induce EMT in cancer cells but also seems to block their proliferation by keeping them in an early phase of the cell division cycle called G1. Therefore, the researchers aimed to characterize the molecular details of these mechanisms at the single-cell level. “It is not fully clear if tumor cells stimulated by TGF-β can display both EMT induction and cell cycle arrest,” says lead author of the study Kazuki Takahashi. “Single-cell analysis will help us understand if these events occur in distinct cell populations.” To examine this, the team utilized specially engineered versions of oral cancer cells that fluoresce red if they are in the G1 phase or green if they are in any other cell cycle phase. The number of red cells increased when [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-10-19T07:29:14-07:00October, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

“Sleeping” cancer cells could prevent tumour metastasis

Source: www.drugtargetreview.com Author: Anna Begley (Drug Target Review) Researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, US, have developed a new therapeutic approach by preventing the growth of metastatic tumours in mice to force cancer cells into a dormant state in which they are unable to proliferate. They hope that their findings will lead to new treatments that prevent the recurrence or spread of various cancer types, including breast cancer and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). In a previous study, scientists discovered that the ability of cancer cells to remain dormant is controlled by a protein called NR2F1. This receptor protein can enter the cell nucleus and turn numerous genes on or off to activate a programme that prevents the cancer cells from proliferating. NR2F1 levels are usually low in primary tumours but are elevated in dormant disseminated cancer cells. Levels of the NR2F1 protein then decline once more when cancer cells start proliferating again and form recurrent or metastatic tumours. “We therefore thought that activating NR2F1 using a small molecule could be an attractive clinical strategy to induce cancer cell dormancy and prevent recurrence and metastasis,” explained Dr Julio Aguirre-Ghiso. In the new study, detailed in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), the researchers used a computer-based screening approach to identify a drug, named C26, that activates NR2F1. The researchers found that treating patient-derived HNSCC cells with C26 boosted the levels of NR2F1 and arrested cell proliferation. The researchers then tested whether C26 would prevent metastasis [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-01-01T07:32:24-07:00January, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Head and neck cancer cells hijack nearby healthy tissue, promoting further invasion of cancer cells

Source: www.eurekalert.org Author: University of Michigan news release Up to half of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma will experience tumor recurrence or new tumors--tumors that often spread and are difficult to treat. A team of scientists led by the University of Michigan School of Dentistry identified a mechanism by which head and neck cancer cells subvert adjacent normal tissue, allowing small clusters of cancer cells to burrow beneath the healthy tissue. The team decided to look at this particular mechanism in head and neck cancer because a specific gene, DMBT1, appeared on a screen of genes that are silenced during oral cancer, said principal investigator Nisha D'Silva, the Donald A. Kerr Endowed Collegiate Professor of Oral Pathology. Researchers from the D'Silva lab found that when DMBT1 was suppressed in head and neck cancer cells, it promoted aggressive invasion and metastasis in laboratory studies and was associated with metastasis in patients. They also found that two proteins secreted by head and neck cancer cells suppress DMBT1 in nearby healthy tissue, subverting it to promote invasion of a small amount of cancer cells, which burrow under healthy tissue. Researchers looked at this mechanism in mice, chick embryos and cultures of human cancer cells. "In the chick embryos, none of the tumors that overexpressed DMBT1 metastasized, whereas most of the control tumors that had low DMBT1 metastasized", D'Silva said. "The importance of this paper is that loss of DMBT1 in cancer cells and adjacent normal tissue benefits cancer cells, allowing [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-05-27T08:08:39-07:00May, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Deactivating cancer cell gene boosts immunotherapy for head and neck cancers

Source: newsroom.ucla.edu Author: Brianna Aldrich By targeting an enzyme that plays a key role in head and neck cancer cells, researchers from the UCLA School of Dentistry were able to significantly slow the growth and spread of tumors in mice and enhance the effectiveness of an immunotherapy to which these types of cancers often become resistant. Their findings, published online in the journal Molecular Cell, could help researchers develop more refined approaches to combating highly invasive head and neck squamous cell cancers, which primarily affect the mouth, nose and throat. Immunotherapy, which is used as a clinical treatment for various cancers, harnesses the body’s natural defenses to combat disease. Yet some cancers, including head and neck squamous cell carcinomas, don’t respond as well to the therapy as others do. The prognosis for these head and neck cancers is poor, with a high five-year mortality rate, and there is an urgent need for effective treatments. The UCLA research team, led by distinguished professor Dr. Cun-Yu Wang, chair of oral biology at the dentistry school, demonstrated that by targeting a vulnerability in the cellular process of tumor duplication and immunity, they could affect tumor cells’ response to immunotherapy. The enzyme they focused on, KDM4A, is what is known as an epigenetic factor — a molecule that regulates gene expression, silencing some genes in cells and activating others. In squamous cell head and neck cancers, overexpression of KDM4A promotes gene expression associated with cancer cell replication and spread. It is well known that [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-03-25T13:21:05-07:00March, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

NYU study shows oral cancer pain may predict likelihood of cancer spreading

Source: www.ada.org Author: Mary Beth Versaci An oral cancer patient's pain intensity score could predict cancer metastasis, helping with future testing options and surgical decision-making, according to a study from the New York University College of Dentistry. The authors of "Oncogenes Overexpressed in Metastatic Oral Cancers from Patients with Pain: Potential Pain Mediators Released in Exosomes," published in September by Scientific Reports, an open-access journal from Nature Research, used a questionnaire to document the pain experienced by 72 oral cancer patients before oral cancer surgery. While most patients reported some pain, those with the most pain were more likely to have cancer that had spread to lymph nodes in the neck, suggesting patients with less pain were at lower risk of metastasis, according to the study. "While we need to undertake a follow-up study, our current data reveal that a patient's pain intensity score works as well as the current method — depth of invasion, or how deeply a tumor has invaded nearby tissue — as an index to predict metastasis," lead author Aditi Bhattacharya, Ph.D., said in an NYU news release about the study. To help understand why metastatic cancers are more painful, the researchers looked for differences in gene expression in metastatic cancers from patients with high levels of pain and nonmetastatic cancers from patients not experiencing pain and identified 40 genes that were more highly expressed in painful metastatic cancers, suggesting those genes are associated with oral cancer metastasis and mediate cancer pain, according to the study. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-11-14T11:08:36-07:00November, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

UCM computer science professor researches use of AI in cancer treatment

Source: www.dailystarjournal.com Author: Sara Lawson New research by a University of Central Missouri faculty member uses an innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique to allow physicians to predict which patients are at low risk of distant metastasis in order to help minimize severe side effects from radiation treatment. The research conducted by Zhiguo Zhou, assistant professor of computer science, is titled “Multifaceted radiomics for distant metastasis prediction in head-and-neck cancer.” Zhou’s research was published in the journal, Physics in Medicine and Biology, and subsequently reported in the July 2020 issue of Physics World. Zhou, who has explored AI in medicine for 10 years, joined the UCM faculty in 2019. He began working on this recently published study more than three years ago while serving in the Department of Radiation in oncology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. One of his UT colleagues, Jing Wang, served as co-author on the journal article. Zhou said the research proposes a novel model for predicting metastasis in head-and-neck cancer after radiotherapy with “outstanding results.” It is a study he believes could provide a general framework which could be extended to predict treatment outcomes for primary cancers in other parts of the human body. While the research now undergoes a validation process that involves a multi-institutional prospective study, Zhou is hopeful that it can be applied in clinical settings within the next two to three years. “Nowadays, radiotherapy has become one of the most important treatment methods in cancer therapy,” Zhou said. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-09-06T06:44:52-07:00September, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Reducing RT toxicity in head and neck cancer: recent research context

Source: www.medpagetoday.com Author: Kristin Jenkins, contributing writer, MedPage Today In patients with head and neck malignancies, studies show that the significant acute and long-term toxicities and poor quality of life (QOL) associated with postoperative radiation therapy (PORT) can be improved by selectively reducing larger radiotherapy volumes. This includes treating just one side of the neck. In patients with locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), however, locoregional failure rates with the omission of PORT to the pathologically uninvolved neck (PN0) have been less clear. As a result, PORT has historically been delivered to the PN0 neck, with several studies showing high rates of regional control ranging from 95% to 100%. Notably, consensus clinical practice guidelines continue to recommend the use of bilateral irradiation of node-negative necks. However, results from a prospective phase II study in 72 patients with primary HNSCC and high-risk pathology features now suggest that PORT to the PNo neck can be eliminated without sacrificing excellent disease control or QOL. At a median follow-up of 53 months, absolute regional control in the unirradiated neck was 97%, even though 67 patients (93%) had stage III/IV disease and 71% of tumors involved or crossed midline. No patient received contralateral neck PORT, and 17 patients (24%) were treated for the primary neck tumor only, said Wade Thorstad, MD, of Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues. The 5-year rates of local control, regional control, progression-free survival, and overall survival (OS) were 84%, 93%, 60%, and 64%, respectively, they reported [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2019-11-21T12:57:43-07:00November, 2019|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer-associated fibroblasts provide a suitable microenvironment for tumor development and progression in oral tongue squamous cancer

Source: 7thspace.com Author: LiJi Huan et al Oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC) is still associated with a poor prognosis due to local recurrence and metastasis. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) play an important role in the complex processes of cancer stroma interaction and tumorigenesis. This study aims to determine the role of CAFs in the development and progression of OTSCC. Methods: Immunohistochemistry was performed to evaluate the frequency and distribution of CAFs in 178 paraffin specimens from patients with OTSCC. Immunofluorescence, a cell proliferation assay, flow cytometry, migration and invasion assays and western blot analysis were used to study the effects of CAFs and the corresponding conditioned medium (CM) on the proliferation and invasion of OTSCC cell lines. Results: Statistical analysis showed a strong correlation between the frequency and distribution of CAFs and the clinicopathological characteristics of patients with cN0 OTSCC, including pathological stage (PÂ =Â 0.001), T classification (PÂ =Â 0.001), and N classification (PÂ =Â 0.009). Survival analysis demonstrated a negative correlation of the frequency and distribution of CAFs with the overall survival and disease-free survival of patients with cN0 tongue squamous cell cancer (PÂ =Â 0.009, 0.002, respectively); Cox regression analysis showed that the presence of CAFs (relative risk: 2.113, CI 1.461-3.015, PÂ =Â 0.023) is an independent prognostic factor. A functional study demonstrated that CAFs and CM from CAFs could promote the growth, proliferation, mobility, invasion and even Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) of OTSCC cells compared with NFs and CM from NFs. Conclusions: CAFs were an independent [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2015-06-21T17:18:18-07:00June, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

New method of predicting the spread of throat cancer to other body parts found

Source: starglobaltribune.com Author: staff Independent of other factors, such as smoking history and HPV status, matted lymph nodes appear to signal increased chance of oropharyngeal cancer spreading to other parts of the body. Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System have found a new indicator that may predict which patients with a common type of throat cancer are most likely have the cancer spread to other parts of their bodies. Patients with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma who had “matted” lymph nodes – nodes that are connected together – had a 69 percent survival rate over three years, compared to 94 percent for patients without matted nodes, according to a study published online ahead of print publication in Head & Neck. The oropharynx is an area that includes the back of the tongue, soft palate, throat and tonsils. “The spread of cancer throughout the body accounts for about 45 percent of the deaths from oropharyngeal carcinoma,” says the study’s senior author, Douglas B. Chepeha, M.D., M.S.P.H., an associate professor of otolaryngology head and neck surgery at the U-M Medical School. “Our findings may help doctors identify patients who are at higher risk for having their cancer metastasize and who would benefit from additional systemic therapy. Conversely, some patients without matted nodes may benefit from a reduction of the current standard treatment, which would cut down on uncomfortable side effects.” Notably, the findings indicate an increased risk independent of other established prognostic factors, such as the patient’s history of smoking or [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-05-07T08:16:13-07:00May, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

GP96 is over-expressed in oral cavity cancer and is a poor prognostic indicator for patients receiving radiotherapy

Source: http://7thspace.com Author: Chien-Yu Lin et al. Oral cavity cancers (ORC) are the most common cancers, and standard treatment is radical surgery with postoperative radiotherapy. However, locoregional failure remains a major problem, indicating radioresistance an important issue. Our previous work has shown that GP96 contributed to radioresistance in nasopharyngeal and oral cancer cell lines. In this study, we determined clinical significance of GP96 in ORC by evaluation of GP96 expression and its association with disease prognosis in patients receiving radiotherapy Methods: Total of 79 ORC patients (77 males, median age: 48 years old) receiving radical surgery and postoperative radiotherapy between Oct 1999 and Dec 2004 were enrolled. Patients in pathological stages II, III and IV were 16.5%, 16.5% and 67%, respectively. For each patient, a pair of carcinoma tissue and grossly adjacent normal mucosa was obtained. GP96-expression was examined by western blot analysis, and the association with clinicopathological status was determined. Results: Three-year locoregional control (LRC), distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS), disease-specific survival (DSS) and overall survival (OS) rates were 69%, 79%, 63% and 57%, respectively. We found that 55 patients (70%) displayed GP96-overexpression in the tumor tissue, which correlated with a higher pN stage (p=0.020) and tumor depth (>10 mm) (p=0.045). Nodal extracapsular spreading (ECS) and GP96-overexpression predicted adverse LRC (p=0.049 and p=0.008). When stratified by nodal ECS, the adverse impact of GP96 remained significant in three-year LRC (p=0.004). In multivariate analysis, GP96-overexpression was also an independent predictor of LRC, DSS and OS (p=0.018, p=0.011 and p=0.012). Conclusion: GP96 may [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-10-15T06:06:51-07:00October, 2011|Oral Cancer News|