University Medical Center Groningen treats first cancer patient with stem cells from his own salivary gland

Source: www.taylordailypress.net Author: Braeden Haige On Thursday December 15, the surgery on Casper van den Noort (43 years old) was the first of its kind in the Netherlands and may have been the first to obtain his own cells from cultured miniature salivary glands (organelles) after many years of research. The stem cell transplant should ensure that van den Noort will no longer suffer from dry mouth as a result of his treatment for tongue tumor. Van den Noort spoke of a private moment. “The injections were a little sensitive. I am of course very curious to see what happens next, and whether this will have the intended effect. It would be really nice if that salivary gland could start working again.” Low quality of life In the Netherlands there are around 2,500 new patients each year with a tumor in the head and neck region. Many of these patients have a good chance of recovery after radiation. A serious complication is that in 40 percent of patients, the salivary glands no longer function properly after treatment. As a result, patients constantly suffer from dry mouth. Chewing and swallowing is difficult, sense of taste is reduced, speech is very difficult, and teeth are damaged. As a result, these patients often experience a significantly reduced quality of life. A tumor on the tongue was found earlier this year in Van den Noort. During his operation at UMCG, part of his salivary glands were removed. “We’ve grown stem cells from this in [...]

2022-12-19T11:13:28-07:00December, 2022|Oral Cancer News|
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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 [...]

2021-03-25T13:21:05-07:00March, 2021|Oral Cancer News|
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What’s coming down the pike in the dental profession?

Source: www.dentistryiq.com Author: Richard H. Nagelberg, DDS A plethora of dental research is underway in the US as well as globally. Some of these advancements will come to fruition and be commercially available, and some will die on the vine. There are innovations in essentially every dental discipline, with breakthroughs that have the potential to enhance oral health in ways we couldn’t imagine in the past. The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) will increase in the future. AI is already at work in hospitals to diagnose cancer and anticipate trends in health care. AI will have a significant effect in the dental profession on a daily basis, from evaluating images for pathology, to prosthetics and systemic care, among many others. AI promises to increase efficiency in dental practice by facilitating faster diagnosis, predictive analytics, and autocharting. Other areas of research and development include gene therapy and stem cells. Research is underway using gene therapy to restore salivary function in patients who have undergone radiation treatment, which could be a tremendous improvement in health for these individuals. The negative impact of dry mouth extends far beyond the discomfort associated with inadequate or complete lack of saliva. It has a significant effect on the quality of life of the individual and the health of the oral cavity. The ability to restore salivary function could be life-changing for many people. Other initiatives involve transformative research in periodontics, specifically agents operating on the host response and others applied to the diseased periodontal pockets. Some [...]

2020-02-25T08:26:05-07:00February, 2020|Oral Cancer News|
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Silk and stem cells are being used to generate salivary glands

Source: biotechin.asia Author: Manish Muhuri Saliva is a watery substance secreted by the salivary glands located in the mouth. Saliva is essential for good health, as it assists in speaking, swallowing, food digestion, preventing oral infections in addition to many other tasks. Without normal salivary function the frequency of dental caries, gum disease (gingivitis), and other oral problems increases significantly. Location and types of salivary glands in humans. Image Courtesy : Wikimedia Commons Dysfunction or reduction in activity of salivary glands can be caused by many factors, including diabetes, radiation therapy for head and neck tumors, aging, medication side effects, and Sjögren’s syndrome. Sjogren’s is an autoimmune disease where the body attacks its own tear ducts and salivary glands. Patients suffering from this disease have severely dry mouth. No treatments are currently available for dry mouth. Salivary glands, unfortunately, have very little regenerative capacity. The title must have left you wondering about the correlation between silk and saliva – what do they have in common? They are both actually part of a unique experiment going on in San Antonio, a study that could change the lives of millions of people who suffer from dry mouth. Chih-Ko Yeh , BDS, Ph.D., and Xiao-Dong Chen, MD, MS, Ph.D., of the UT Health San Antonio School of Dentistry decided there had to be a better way to help people than try to develop drugs and figured that stem cells may help solve a common, painful problem. Yeh said the idea is [...]

2017-01-30T12:36:05-07:00January, 2017|Oral Cancer News|
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New research opens door to understanding human tonsil cancer



Source: medicalxpress.com Author: staff Researchers at Simon Fraser University and the BC Cancer Agency have developed a groundbreaking method to identify and separate stem cells that reside in the tonsils. Their research, which sheds new light on the fight against oral cancer, is published today in the journal Stem Cell Reports. While stem cells in many other body tissues have been well studied, little is known about these stem cells, says researcher Catherine Kang, a PhD student in the Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology and lead author of the paper. Ninety per cent of human tonsil cancers show evidence of HPV (human papillomavirus) infection. But little is known about its role in causing these cancers. Researchers suspect it is a key player, as HPV is the major risk factor for cervical cancer. Kang, who is working with BPK professor Miriam Rosin, director of the BC Oral Cancer Prevention Program, and UBC professor Connie Eaves of the Terry Fox Laboratory, was interested in finding out why the tonsil is particularly susceptible to HPV and wondered if it might have something to do with the stem cells of the tissue that coats the tonsils. When she purified these cells and made them incorporate a cancer-causing gene normally transmitted by HPV, the cells grew abnormally in a special tissue culture system, and created what one might imagine what the beginning stages of human tonsil cancer would look like. "This is a very exciting finding, as it is the first stage of human [...]

2015-11-03T10:06:31-07:00November, 2015|Oral Cancer News|
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Stem cell therapy could offer new hope for defects and injuries to head, mouth

Source: www.newswise.com In the first human study of its kind, researchers found that using stem cells to re-grow craniofacial tissues—mainly bone—proved quicker, more effective and less invasive than traditional bone regeneration treatments. Researchers from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry and the Michigan Center for Oral Health Research partnered with Ann Arbor-based Aastrom Biosciences Inc. in the clinical trial, which involved 24 patients who required jawbone reconstruction after tooth removal. Patients either received experimental tissue repair cells or traditional guided bone regeneration therapy. The tissue repair cells, called ixmyelocel-T, are under development at Aastrom, which is a U-M spinout company. "In patients with jawbone deficiencies who also have missing teeth, it is very difficult to replace the missing teeth so that they look and function naturally," said Darnell Kaigler, principal investigator and assistant professor at the U-M School of Dentistry. "This technology and approach could potentially be used to restore areas of bone loss so that missing teeth can be replaced with dental implants." William Giannobile, director of the Michigan Center for Oral Health Research and chair of the U-M Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine, is co-principal investigator on the project. The treatment is best suited for large defects such as those resulting from trauma, diseases or birth defects, Kaigler said. These defects are very complex because they involve several different tissue types—bone, skin, gum tissue—and are very challenging to treat. The main advantage to the stem cell therapy is that it uses the patient's own cells to [...]

2012-07-31T14:01:48-07:00July, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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Stem cell sparing radiotherapy for head and neck cancer may avoid salivary gland damage

Source: European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) Barcelona, Spain: Researchers believe they may have found a way to avoid damaging salivary glands during radiotherapy treatment for head and neck cancer – a discovery that could improve the quality of life of 500,000 patients a year worldwide with the disease. Presenting their findings to the 31st conference of the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO31) [1], the researchers said that they had discovered that the stem cells essential for regenerating the parotid gland (the largest pair of salivary glands) were located mainly in its major ducts, and that these could easily be avoided during radiotherapy or given a minimal radiation dose. "This would significantly reduce complications arising from radiotherapy for head and neck cancer," said Dr Peter van Luijk, a research associate at the University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands. Around 40% of patients treated for head and neck cancer suffer from the distressing side-effects of dry mouth syndrome – a condition that can occur when the parotid gland stops working properly after radiation damage. This causes problems with eating, sleeping, speech, tooth loss and oral hygiene, leading to diminished quality of life, social isolation and difficulty in continuing work. Attempts to treat dry mouth syndrome and its consequences can cost hundreds or even thousands of Euros per patient per year and are mostly insufficient. Dr van Luijk said: "Parotid gland dysfunction after radiotherapy for head and neck cancer was, and still is, a major clinical problem. During radiotherapy, attempts [...]

2012-05-10T09:41:29-07:00May, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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New Study Shows that Fatty Acids Reduces Effectiveness of Chemotherapy

Source: Medicalexpress.com Researchers at University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands, have discovered a substance that has an adverse effect on nearly all types of chemotherapy - making cancer cells insensitive to the treatment. Chemotherapy often loses effectiveness over time. It is often unclear how or why this happens. It now appears that chemotherapy is made ineffective by two types of fatty acid that are made by stem cells in the blood. Under the influence of cisplatin chemotherapy, the stem cells secrete these fatty acids that induce resistance to a broad spectrum of chemotherapies. These substances are referred to by researchers as 'PIFAs' which stands for platinum-induced fatty acids. Cisplatin is a type of chemotherapy that is widely used for the treatment of cancer, including cancer of the lungs and ovaries. Tumors under the skin The researchers studied the effect of PIFA's in mice and human cells. The mice studied had tumors under the skin. Under normal conditions, the tumors would decrease in size following the administration of chemotherapy. In the study, after administering the fatty acids to the mice, the tumors were found to be insensitive to chemotherapy. The fatty acids were isolated from the medium in which chemotherapy exposed stem cells were grown. But also stem cells in the blood of patients produce the fatty acids that desensitize tumors to chemotherapy. The fatty acids are also found in commercially-produced fish oil supplements containing omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids as well as in some algae extracts. In the experiments conducted [...]

2011-09-13T10:50:40-07:00September, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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Using a lab-grown trachea, surgeons conduct the world’s first synthetic organ transplant

Source: www.popsci.com Author: Clay Dillow Surgeons working at Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden have taken a huge step forward for regenerative medicine by successfully executing the world’s first synthetic organ transplant. The donor-less transplant saved the life of a 36-year-old cancer patient, who is doing well now after having received a new windpipe grown from his own stem cells. This story is about as international as it gets: The Eritrean patient, Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene, was pursuing his doctorate in geology in Iceland when his trachea was consumed by an inoperable tumor that grew so bad that it was actually blocking his breathing. So 3-D scans of his windpipe were sent to scientists at University College London, which crafted a glass scaffold that was a perfect match for Beyene’s trachea and two main bronchi. The scaffold was in turn was sent to Sweden, where it was soaked in stem cells from Beyene’s own bone marrow. The stem cells took hold and within just two days had filled the scaffold, creating a new trachea that is, biologically speaking, Beyene’s own tissue. A 12-hour operation by an Italian surgeon specializing in trachea operations removed Beyene’s windpipe and all signs of the cancer and then replaced it with the new, lab-grown organ. That was a month ago. Today, Beyene is recovering well. Because the organ was grown from his own cells, there is no risk of his body rejecting it and no need for the harsh regimen of anti-rejection drugs that usually go hand [...]

2011-07-08T20:34:52-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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Antibody as ‘smart bomb’ to fight cancer

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com Author: staff A joint team of Indian and Australian scientists claims to have achieved a breakthrough by creating an antibody which could be used for developing a "medical smart bomb" that would help seek out and eradicate the root of cancer — the stem cells. The international project is a collaboration between Australia's Deakin University and Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore along with Barwon Health's Andrew Love Cancer Centre and Chem Genex Pharmaceuticals. The team has, in fact, created the world's first RNA aptamer, a chemical antibody that acts like a guided missile to seek out and bind only to cancer stem cells, the Cancer Science journal reported. The aptamer has the potential to deliver drugs directly to the stem cells and to be used to develop a more effective cancer imaging system for early detection of the disease, say the scientists. The Director of Deakin Medical School's Nanomedicine Program , Professor Wei Duan, said that the development of the aptamer had huge implications for the way cancer is detected and then treated. Duan said: "The survival rates for many cancers remain poor, due partly to the inability to detect cancer early. To provide a cure for cancer we must accurately detect and eliminate the cancer stem cells."

2011-02-21T21:56:23-07:00February, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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