2016 – Page 7 – Oral Cancer News

HPV is changing the face of head and neck cancers

Source: www.healio.comAuthor: Christine Cona A drastic increase in the number of HPV-associated oropharynx cancers, particularly those of the tonsil and base of tongue, has captured the attention of head and neck oncologists worldwide. In February, at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium in Chandler, Ariz., Maura Gillison, MD, PhD, professor and Jeg Coughlin Chair of Cancer Research at The Ohio State University in Columbus, presented data that showed that the proportion of all head and neck squamous cell cancers that were of the oropharynx — which are most commonly HPV-positive cancers — increased from 18% in 1973 to 32% in 2005. Maura Gillison, MD, PhD, Jeg Coughlin Chair of Cancer Research at The Ohio State University, said screening for HPV in the head and neck is years behind cervical screening for HPV. In addition, studies from the United States, Europe, Denmark and Australia indicate that HPV-positive patients have a more than twofold increased cancer survival than HPV-negative patients, according to Gillison. With the rising incidence of HPV-related oropharynx cancers, it will soon be the predominant type of cancer in the oral or head and neck region, according to Andy Trotti, MD, director of radiation oncology clinical research, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, in Tampa, Fla. “We should be focusing on HPV-related oropharyngeal cancer because it will dominate the field of head and neck cancers for many years,” he said during an interview with HemOnc Today. “It is certainly an important population for which to continue to [...]

Charlotte Parker2016-06-03T11:11:05-07:00June, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Frontline Cancer: vaccines for HPV near guarantee

Source: www.lajollalight.com Author: Dr. Scott Lippman Dear Scott: “Our son, who is 25, went to the GP yesterday and his doc wasn’t sure about giving the Gardasil I had been bugging him to get. Didn’t you tell me about the benefits of the HPV vaccination?” The note was from a friend. It was personal, but also a topic of wide public interest and one that remains much discussed among cancer researchers and physicians. That’s why I’m answering my friend here. Roughly 12 percent of all human cancers worldwide — more than 1 million cases per year — are caused by viral infections (called oncoviruses) and attributed to a relatively small number of pathogens: human papilloma virus (HPV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Given the emphasis upon other causal factors of cancer, such as genetic mutations or environmental sources, it’s a statistic that’s not well known nor, I would argue, fully appreciated. Human viral oncogenesis is complex, and only a small percentage of the infected individuals develop cancer, but that 12 percent translates into more than 500,000 lives lost each year to virus-caused malignancies. Many of those deaths are preventable because effective vaccines already exist for HPV and HBV. Right now. No future discoveries required. I want to specifically talk about the HPV vaccine. Controversy has constrained its proven effectiveness as a public health tool, but if used as prescribed, the HPV vaccine could essentially eliminate cervical and other HPV-caused cancers. Infection with HPV [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-05-26T08:54:23-07:00May, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Rodeo rider raising awareness of chewing tobacco and oral cancer

Source: www.krcrtv.comAuthor: Danielle Radin REDDING, Calif. - The Redding Rodeo kicked off Wednesday night with events like barrel racing, cattle roping and mutton busting. Professional barrel racer, Carly Twisselman said chewing tobacco is prominent at rodeos. She's teamed up with the Oral Cancer Foundation to try to change that. "We want to show children that you can follow your dreams, be who you want to be, pursue being a rodeo athlete and not chew tobacco," said Twisselman. Twisselman competes in rodeos across the country and sees chewing tobacco time and time again. She's teaching children chewing tobacco is not the 'cool thing to do.' She also wears letting on her sleeves every race that reads, "Be smart, don't start." She also has a brother who chews and had a health scare from it. "My brother's had signs of cancer of the mouth from chewing," said Twisselman. " "I just think that's the wrong message we should be sending to this children." According to the oral cancer foundation, there will be about 48,000 new cases of oral cancer in 2016 in the United States. 75 percent of all oral cancer patients use tobacco. They estimate nearly 10,000 people in the United States will die from oral cancer in 2016.

Charlotte Parker2016-05-19T11:39:43-07:00May, 2016|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|

In an era of rapidly proliferating, precisely targeted treatments, every cancer case has to be played by ear.

Source: www.nytimes.comAuthor: Sidhartha Mukherjee Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro. Photograph by Ansel Adams, via the National Archives, College Park, Md. The bone-marrow biopsy took about 20 minutes. It was 10 o’clock on an unusually chilly morning in New York in April, and Donna M., a self-possessed 78-year-old woman, had flown in from Chicago to see me in my office at Columbia University Medical Center. She had treated herself to orchestra seats for “The Humans” the night before, and was now waiting in the room as no one should be asked to wait: pants down, spine curled, knees lifted to her chest — a grown woman curled like a fetus. I snapped on sterile gloves while the nurse pulled out a bar cart containing a steel needle the length of an index finger. The rim of Donna’s pelvic bone was numbed with a pulse of anesthetic, and I drove the needle, as gently as I could, into the outer furl of bone. A corkscrew of pain spiraled through her body as the marrow was pulled, and then a few milliliters of red, bone-flecked sludge filled the syringe. It was slightly viscous, halfway between liquid and gel, like the crushed pulp of an overripe strawberry. I had been treating Donna in collaboration with my colleague Azra Raza for six years. Donna has a preleukemic syndrome called myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, which affects the bone marrow and blood. It is a mysterious disease with few known treatments. Human bone marrow is normally a [...]

Charlotte Parker2016-05-16T16:34:05-07:00May, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Troisi: Raising age on tobacco purchases would protect Texas children

Source: www.mystatesman.com Author: Catherine Troisi Tobacco products are a known cancer-causing agent and responsible for one in three cancer deaths. Smoking kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined — and thousands more die from smoking-related causes such as fires caused by smoldering cigarettes. E-cigarettes, often touted as a safer alternative, have not been well-studied and may contain unknown poisons. We are not protecting our children from this danger. Unlike alcohol sales, where you have to be 21 years to purchase legally, adolescents and young adults 18 and over can purchase tobacco products. While the Texas Legislature wisely raised the age to buy e-cigarettes from 14 to 18 years last year, it’s time to look at raising the legal age for all tobacco products to 21. The problem is not just those age 18 and older smoking. This young legal age to purchase makes it easier for children under age 18 to get access to cigarettes and other products. Each year, 19,000 Texas children under the age of 18 start smoking. In Texas, almost one out of every six high school students smokes — and over their lifetime, half a million Texans who started smoking under age 18 will ultimately die of tobacco-related diseases. Most of us have someone in our family or know someone who has been affected by a tobacco-related disease. A colleague lost both parents and his only sibling as a result of smoking that began when they were teens. Each [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-05-14T08:19:16-07:00May, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

California Raises Smoking Age To 21

Source: www.huffingtonpost.comAuthor: Huffington Post Staff The law makes it the second state to raise the minimum age to 21, following Hawaii. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California will raise the legal age for purchasing tobacco products to 21 from 18 under a bill signed on Wednesday by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, part of a package of anti-smoking measures that also regulates electronic cigarettes. Under five bills signed into law on Wednesday, California will ban the sale of vaping products or tobacco to anyone under the age of 21, imposing a fine of up to $5,000 against companies that violate the law. “It is long past due for California to update our approach to tobacco,” said Steven Larson, president of the California Medical Association. “There has been an alarming rise in the use of e-cigarettes by teens, putting them at risk for lifelong addiction.” Under the measures, electronic cigarettes will be regulated like traditional ones. That means that wherever cigarettes are banned, such as in restaurants, workplaces and public areas, use of e-cigarettes will also be prohibited. The state will also expand its funding for anti-smoking programs under the bills. Brown stopped short of allowing local counties to impose their own tobacco taxes, noting in his veto message that several proposed new taxes would be placed before voters on the November ballot. *This news story was resourced by the Oral Cancer Foundation, and vetted for appropriateness and accuracy.

Charlotte Parker2016-05-05T12:59:24-07:00May, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Checkpoint inhibitors seen to show potential of immunotherapy in several cancer studies

Source: immuno-oncologynews.com Author: Magdalena Kegel Several new checkpoint inhibitors — a class of immunotherapy drugs used in cancer — continue to show beneficial effects in numerous cancer types, according to data presented at the recent American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Investigated checkpoint inhibitors confirmed earlier results showing evidence of efficacy in melanoma, and also suggested that this class of immunotherapies, which trigger a person’s immune system to attack cancer, might work in patients suffering from certain head and neck cancers. One of the studies, CheckMate-141, exploring the checkpoint blocker nivolumab (Opdivo) in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, was stopped early after 36 percent of the 361 patients survived for one year — an increase of more than 100 percent compared to patients receiving other treatments. Squamous cell carcinoma is usually treated with platinum-based chemotherapy, but the effects are often temporary as the cancer tends to return. Moreover, patients who fail to fully recover after chemotherapy are generally resistant to further treatment. Maura Gillison from Ohio State University, who presented the CheckMate-141 data, said that no effective treatments have been approved for patients with this kind of cancer in over a decade. “I’ve treated head and neck cancers for more than twenty years, and this is the first time I’ve had a drug to go to for patients that have become resistant to first-line treatment,” she said in a press release. Dr. Emma King, a Cancer Research UK-funded head and neck [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-05-04T07:55:52-07:00May, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Baidu Under Investigation After Cancer Patient’s Death

Source: www.fortune.comAuthor: Scott Cendrowski Baidu, the dominant search engine in China, is being investigated by government regulators after social media users criticized the quality of medical ads appearing in its searches. Chinese social media over the weekend gave widespread exposure to the story of Wei Zexi, a young cancer patient whose family pooled together more than $30,000 for his treatments at a government hospital he found through a Baidu search. The hospital marketed an innovative treatment for synovial sarcoma, the rare form of cancer Wei suffered from. Following an unsuccessful treatment and Wei’s death in April, reports spread that the treatment was much less effective than the hospital had advertised. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) sent investigators to Baidu today, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency Baidu has endured criticism recently for similar instances in which dubious medical practices were promoted in paid search results. Analysts have estimated around one quarter of its revenues come from medical and health-care advertisers. “We deeply regret the death of Zexi,” a Baidu spokeswoman said today, adding that the search engine had launched its own internal investigation of the matter. *This news story was resourced by the Oral Cancer Foundation, and vetted for appropriateness and accuracy.

Charlotte Parker2016-05-03T15:05:07-07:00May, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Researchers link hepatitis C virus to head and neck cancers

Source: lymphomanewstoday.com Author: Magdalena Kegel A study from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center shows the hepatitis C infection, previously linked to liver cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, is associated with cancers of the head and neck — a finding that could have immediate implications in how hepatitis-infected patients are screened, and how head and neck cancer patients are treated. Hepatitis C affects as many as 1.5 percent of the U.S. population, making it the most common blood-borne disease in the country, with an estimated 3.9 million having the chronic infection. This number skyrockets to a whopping 130 million to 150 million when considering the global population. New antivirals with few side effects have, however, made it possible to cure up to 90 percent of all hepatitis C patients. The study, “Association Between Hepatitis C Virus and Head and Neck Cancers,” was performed at an MD Anderson clinic focusing on the unmet medical needs of patients with hepatitis C. The clinic opened in 2009, and to date remains the only hepatitis-focused clinic among comprehensive cancer centers in the U.S. “Obviously, a hepatitis C infection could impact how patients respond to their cancer therapy. We also realized that many of our hepatitis patients were excluded from clinical trials. Now that many with hepatitis C can be cured, it is important that we first address and potentially cure the virus, so that they can have access to necessary cancer therapy,” said senior author Harrys A. Torres, in a press release. The [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-04-27T07:47:24-07:00April, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

BMS gets US breakthrough status for head & neck cancer

Source: pharmatimes.com Author: Selina McKee US regulators have awarded Bristol-Myers Squibb’s immunotherapy Opdivo a breakthrough designation for the potential indication of recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN). The move, which should help expedite the drug’s development and review, comes after preliminary clinical evidence indicated it could offer a substantial survival benefit to patients with the condition who have already received platinum-based therapy. A first look at the data from the Phase III CheckMate-141 trial, stopped early in January 2016 after meeting its primary endpoint of overall survival, showed that patients treated with Opdivo (nivolumab) experienced a 30 percent reduction in the risk of death compared to the investigator’s choice of therapy (methotrexate, docetaxel, or cetuximab), with a median overall survival of 7.5 months versus to 5.1 months. Safety signals were also looking good, with treatment-related adverse events (TRAEs) of any grade occurring in 58.9 percent of patients on Opdivo versus 77.5 percent of patients on investigator’s choice. Grade 3-4 TRAEs were reported in 13.1 percent of patients on Opdivo compared to 35.1 percent taking the investigator's choice, while two drug-related deaths were reported as related to Opdivo (pneumonitis and hypercalcaemia), and one Grade 5 event of lung infection in the comparator arm. The findings are particularly pertinent given the particularly bleak outlook for patients whose disease has progressed after platinum therapy and lack of systemic therapies to improve survival, and thus significant unmet medical need for new options. Head and neck cancer is the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-04-27T07:39:35-07:00April, 2016|Oral Cancer News|