tumor – Page 3 – Oral Cancer News

Targeting Cancer Treatment

Source: Medical News Today Cancer treatment is depending more and more today on specific factors of a patient's tumor, including gene mutations, or proteins that are commonly typical of certain cancer cells, rather than focusing on where in the body the cancer started. Before, treatment was based on finding where in the body the cancer originated, such as the breast or lung. Targeted therapy is all about the cancer's genes, tissue environment that contributes the tumor's growth and survival, and its proteins. Nowadays, cancer therapy is designed to interfere with a signal that tells the cancer cells not to die or tells it to divide, while before, chemotherapies had the goal of interfering with cancer cells as division was already underway, when the cells were dividing into new ones. The human body is made of various types of cells, including skin cells, brain cells, or blood cells. Each one has a specific function. Cancer occurs when healthy cells change and start growing out of control; they eventually form a tumor - a mass. A benign tumor is noncancerous, whereas a malignant one is cancerous, it can spread to other parts of the body. Cancer cells either divide too quickly or do not die when they should do Specific genetic mutations within a cell change the way it behaves. When the genes that control cell division mutate (change), they can multiply too quickly; the cell has become cancerous. Cells are genetically programmed to die, when the specific genes that tell the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-06-13T09:47:33-07:00June, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

University of Michigan scientists are at the forefront of cancer stem cell research

Source: www.annarbor.com Author: Betsy de Parry Nine years ago, I walked into the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center for the first time and walked out as a terrified cancer patient. During all the months that I was in treatment, I never saw the labs or gave a thought to the research that was being conducted in them. And then, when standard treatment failed to stop my cancer, I was rescued by a new therapy that was pioneered at U-M by Dr. Mark Kaminski, and I began to appreciate those labs we patients never see and the discoveries that are made in them. Discoveries, after all, save lives. Indeed, labs are hotbeds of discovery. And the labs at Michigan are turning out stem cell research that is revolutionizing the way many cancers are treated. I know — stem cells are two words that stir passion and debate, but there are stem cells... and there are stem cells. What distinguishes them from other cells is their ability to divide and make exact copies of themselves indefinitely, a process called self-renewal, and their ability to change, or differentiate, into other types of cells. Embryonic stem cells — the controversial ones — have unlimited potential to become any type of cell. Adult stem cells — with which we're born — are more restricted than embryonic stem cells in terms of what they can become, but they can still differentiate. For example, adult stem cells in our bone marrow, known as hematopoietic cells, constantly [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-05-07T05:34:43-07:00May, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

New surgical approach can remove throat tumor and rebuild trachea

Source: www.news-medical.net Author: staff Using a novel surgical approach, it's possible to rebuild the trachea and preserve a patient's voice after removing an invasive throat tumor, according to a new report from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. This case study is the first of its kind to not only document a successful technique to create a fully functional trachea, or windpipe, but also report a rare type of malignant tumor in an adult's trachea. Most commonly, this type of tumor is seen in newborns and very rarely occurs in the neck, says lead study author Samer Al-Khudari, M.D., with the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Henry Ford Hospital. "In this case, the patient's tumor had spread to the trachea, thyroid gland, muscles around the thyroid gland and nerves in the area," says Dr. Al-Khudari. According to head and neck cancer surgeon Tamer A. Ghanem, M.D., Ph.D., who led the Henry Ford surgical team, the easiest approach would have been to remove the trachea and the voice box, given the tumor's proximity to the larynx and other surrounding structures. With this method, however, the patient would no longer be able to speak or swallow normally. Instead, the surgical team took another approach. Using tissue and bone from the patient's arm, they were able to reconstruct the trachea, restoring airflow through the trachea and saving the patient's voice. "We had to think outside the box to not only safely remove the tumor, but to allow for optimum functional outcome," says [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-02-04T12:27:54-07:00January, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Recurrence of oral cancer found to signal poor outcome

Source: health.usnews.com Author: staff How people fare when oral cancer recurs depends on where and when the cancer returns, a new study has found. The research included 77 people in Australia who'd had oral squamous cell carcinoma, a cancer that occurs in the thin, flat cells that line the lips and mouth. The cancer was treated with surgery, radiation or both. However, the cancer came back, and they all subsequently had what's called salvage surgery, which is a procedure to remove cancer after an initial treatment fails. The researchers found that people whose cancer recurred at the same site as the initial cancer tended to do worse if the disease returned within six months, whereas those with recurrence at a different site did worse if their cancer came back after six months or more. The overall five-year survival rate after salvage surgery was 50 percent. People who had initially had both surgery and radiation were 1.3 times as likely to die, the investigators found. The median, or midpoint, in time to recurrence was 7.5 months after treatment, and 86 percent of the recurrences occurred within 24 months, the study found. Recurrence occurred at the initial site in 39 people, in the neck on the same side as their initial cancer in 27 people and in the neck on the opposite side in 11 people. "Presumably, the poor outcome reflects a combination of more advanced disease at initial presentation, resistant tumor biology and limited salvage options," wrote Michael D. Kernohan and [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-12-27T16:16:26-07:00December, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Autofluorescence and early detection of mucosal lesions in patients at risk for oral cancer.

Source: HighWire--Stanford University Loss of autofluorescence as an early phenomenon associated with tissue degeneration seems to be promising for the diagnosis of oral cancer. The method seems to make visible early structural and biochemical alterations of the oral mucosa not always evident under direct inspection of the oral cavity.For this reason, the margins of the mucosal lesions usually appear wider compared with direct visualization. Actual extension of the potentially malignant lesions must be precisely perceived to avoid any underestimation of the tumor. In this study, 32 patients at risk for oral cancer underwent autofluorescence test. Of these patients, 12 (group A) experienced potentially malignant diseases. The other 20 patients (group B) were previously operated on for oral cancer. In addition, 13 patients showed loss of autofluorescence (8 patients from group A and 5 patients from group B). Among these 13 patients, 12 were affected with lesions of relevance (in group A, 6 had squamocellular carcinoma and 2 had low-grade dysplasia; in group B, 2 patients had high-grade dysplasia, 2 had low-grade dysplasia, and 1 had an epithelial hypertrophy with inflammatory cells). Preliminary results seem to indicate that autofluorescence is a high-performing test for the individuation of oral cancer in populations at risk (sensibility up to 100% and specificity up to 93% in this study).

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-12-03T10:39:40-07:00December, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Experts say oral cancer on the rise in younger people

Source: www.clickondetroit.com Author: staff It was the winter of 2002 when then-34-year-old Kelley Fish of Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., first spotted the lump that would change her life. "I was looking in the mirror, and I thought 'what the heck is that?' It was certainly visible," said Fish. Fish went to the doctor, who thought it was an infection and prescribed antibiotics. But two months later, the lump was still there. "Then they went forward and sent me to an ear, nose and throat specialist and finally had the lump removed," said Fish. Fish said the tumor was the size of a large grape, and it was malignant. Fish was diagnosed with stage 4 oral cancer. "I was horrified," said Fish. "They say you should never get on the Internet. The statistics were not in my favor at that point." Experts said oral cancer includes cancers of the lips, tongue, cheeks, floor of the mouth, hard and soft palate, sinuses and throat. Stage four is the most advanced stage. Fish had surgery, 32 radiation treatments and three cycles of chemotherapy. The treatments left her fatigued and suffering multiple side effects. "It was hell, excuse my expression," said Fish. "I was unable to swallow after a period of time. I had burns, second- or third-degree burns, on my neck. It was the scariest moment or time in my life to say the least." Like most people, Fish had assumed oral cancer was something older men got, not 34-year-old women. "When I [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-10-26T09:06:40-07:00October, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer answer? Researchers are working on a more individual approach to each tumour

Source: macleans.ca By: Kate Lanau This summer, Vancouver cancer researchers announced a medical first. Presented with an extremely rare case of tongue cancer—it was so unusual there were no standard treatments to use—they sequenced the DNA of the patient’s tumour, and discovered similarities with another cancer (renal cell carcinoma, a type of kidney cancer) for which there’s a known therapy. The patient received drugs tailored to these results, and the cancer stopped growing for several months. Steven Jones, a molecular biologist with the B.C. Cancer Agency Genome Sciences Centre and one of two lead researchers on the study, calls it a breakthrough. It isn’t standard in hospitals to genetically sequence a patient’s tumour, but “the goal would be, maybe in 10 years, this would be routine,” he says. Dr. Leif Ellisen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is working to bring tumour genotyping from the lab into the clinic. He and a team have designed a system that can screen relatively large numbers of patients for a variety of mutations across different cancer genes. These genetic mutations are a tumour’s “Achilles’ heel,” noted a recent editorial in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine. “Every tumour has a flaw,” says Ellisen, who’ll be discussing his work as part of the Scienta Health Series in Toronto on Oct. 7, and his goal is to find it. It’s the mantra of a growing number of researchers, who tout personalized medicine—treatments tailored to each individual—as the future of cancer care. Traditionally, cancer treatment [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-10-08T10:18:00-07:00October, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

PET-FDG improves staging, management of head, neck cancer

Source: helathimaging.com Author: staff Adding whole-body PET-FDG to the pre-therapeutic conventional staging of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma improved the TNM [tumor, node and metastasis] classification of the disease and altered the management of 13.7 percent of patients, according to a study published in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Max Lonneux, MD, from the departments of nuclear medicine, head and neck surgery, radiation oncology and maxillofacial surgery, Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc in Brussels, and colleagues included his 233 patients in this multicenter, prospective study with newly diagnosed and untreated head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Researchers first determined the TNM stage and therapeutic decision based on the conventional work-up (including physical exam, CT/MRI of the head and neck region, and thoracic CT) and sealed in envelope. They then performed whole-body PET-FDG, and subsequently wrote TNM stage and therapeutic decision in a sealed envelope. The investigators also recorded changes in TNM stages and in patient management as a result of PET-FDG imaging. Clinical outcome and histopathology were used as gold standards to validate the TNM stage. Conventional and PET stages were compared using the McNemar test. According to the authors, conventional and PET stages were discordant in 43 percent of the patients. PET proved to be accurate in 47 patients and inaccurate in 13 patients. TNM status was left unconfirmed in 40 patients because no therapeutic change was expected from the stage difference. The researchers found that conventional plus PET TNM classification (envelope two) was significantly more [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-17T08:18:31-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

1,000: the magic number in genomic research

Source: www.minnpost.com Aurhor: Sharon Schmickle The number 1,000 is emerging as a standard benchmark on the frontiers of genomic research. In the 1000 Genomes Project — launched two years ago — American, British, Chinese and German scientists are sequencing the genomes of some 1,000 individuals from around the world in order to aid medical research as it relates to human genetic variation. Then there’s the goal of the $1,000 genome. Reduce the cost of accurately spelling an individual’s DNA to that level and we could see practical results from decades of genomic discovery -- even at the clinical level. A research team from Complete Genomics Inc. in Mountain View, California, reported progress in that regard this week in the journal Science. Now comes a new report from the “1,000 tumor” project at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology. The Chicago scientists are working toward the goal of collecting and analyzing the genetic sequences and variations of every gene expressed by 1,000 tumors. One year into the three-year project, they have completed data for genes expressed by 100 tumors -- primarily breast cancer, head and neck cancer, and leukemia. In the process, they have streamlined techniques for analyzing the remaining 900 tumors. Meanwhile, by correlating genetic data with patient outcomes, the Chicago team has begun to identify genetic patterns within tumors that may help them predict how a cancer will behave. Eventually, the research should help identify which patients would benefit from which treatments. We must have [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-01-06T21:15:57-07:00January, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Terminal cancer patient is given the all clear

Source: www.northamptonchron.co.uk Author: staff A mouth cancer patient who was told he had only a year to live is celebrating after being given the all clear from doctors. In May this year, Brian Barford was given the awful news after he had been referred by a dentist to Northampton General Hospital where he was told he had mouth cancer. The 66-year-old said: "My mouth had been bleeding but I had no other signs. I had no idea – there had been no swelling or anything. "I saw the consultant who said the tumour was too near the vital organs to operate on and there was nothing they could do. It was just a matter of time. "They told me I had around a year to live. "It hit me like a ton of bricks. "I accepted it, though I was never going to give up, but I thought, 'I'm 66, and I've had a good life.'" Mr Barford, from Kings Heath, Northampton, decided to enjoy the time he had left and spend his days with loved ones. He went running, drank beer and, following a two-week course of radiotherapy, took a well-earned holiday with family and friends. On hearing the news Mr Barford had been diagnosed with cancer, colleagues at his former workplace, Phoenix Paving LTD, in Kettering, took their old workmate for a day to remember, watching the cricket at Lord's. With the onslaught of cancer, his weight plummeted from 14 to 11 stone. His wife Susan, aged 56, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-11-16T22:10:29-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|