Identification of high-risk oral premalignant lesions
12/17/2006 Vancouver, BC, Canada Miriam P. Rosin et al. Fifth AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, Nov 12-15, 2006 The genomic era has fueled a rapid emergence of new technology, with the potential for developing innovative approaches to detection, risk assessment and management of premalignant disease. A key missing link in the development of novel screening and intervention strategies has been our limited understanding of the natural history of the disease. Not all early disease will progress to cancer. To be effective in reducing cancer risk, molecular (and other) technologies need to target change in early lesions that is strongly associated with outcome - in other words, the likelihood of progression to cancer. This presentation will describe early results of an on-going Oral Cancer Prediction Longitudinal (OCPL) study located in British Columbia, funded by NIDCR for 8 years (1999 - 2008). This study is evaluating a set of innovative technologies alone and in combination to best correlate with outcome for oral premalignant lesions (OPLs). The plan is to use these devices to guide key clinicopathological decisions on patient risk and treatment. The long-term goal is to create a province-wide screening network in which these devices would act as a series of overlapping sieves that will in a step-by-step fashion progressively filter out patients in the community with high-risk OPLs and triage them to dysplasia clinics where higher-cost molecular tools will guide intervention. The design of the OCPL study is as follows. Approximately 500 patients are being followed [...]