January 2023 – Oral Cancer News

New saliva home test can detect early signs of oral and throat cancer ‘with 90% accuracy’

Source: www.euronews.com Author: Josephine Joly Oral and throat cancers are notoriously difficult to detect – but a new saliva test, launched in the US, could change the game and enable much earlier diagnosis for patients. - Copyright Copyright: Canva A new home screening test using artificial intelligence to detect oral and throat cancers from saliva samples has been launched in the United States, with hopes the device could change the future of oral and throat cancer detection. With more than 90 per cent accuracy, the saliva test is the first to detect early signs of oral and throat cancers based on a technology that has received the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) “breakthrough device” designation. Notoriously difficult to detect, these cancers can often go undiagnosed until they have reached an advanced stage due to a lack of effective diagnostics tools, resulting in low survival rates. Current screening methods rely on visual and tactile examinations by a healthcare provider, meaning lesions must grow large enough until they can be detected by the naked eye. Only 28 per cent of patients receive an early diagnosis, and those receiving a late diagnosis face a prolonged battle with oral cancer. The five-year survival rates for oral and oesophageal cancers are 68 and 20.6 per cent respectively, but when detected early, those numbers can jump to more than 86 and 47 per cent. In the US alone, the National Cancer Institute estimates that there will be 54,000 new cases of oral cancer [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-01-23T19:06:51-07:00January, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

Ultralow dose of nivolumab offers huge cost savings

Source: www.medscape.com Author: M. Alexander Otto, PA, MMS A randomized clinical trial from India raises the possibility of huge cost savings by using much lower doses of immunotherapy. The researchers used just 6% of the recommended dose of nivolumab instead of the full dose in their treatment of patients with advanced head and neck cancer, and the addition of this low dose to the standard regimen improved 1-year survival by 25%. The study was published on January 10 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and has been downloaded almost 2000 times. The findings suggest that low doses of immunotherapy might be equivalent to the much higher doses that are approved and are currently used, two medical oncologists comment in a related editorial. If these findings can be extrapolated to other immune checkpoint inhibitors and to other tumor types, switching to the lower doses could save healthcare systems billions of dollars, write Aaron Mitchell, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, and Daniel Goldstein, MD, of Tel Aviv University, Israel. Improving Access With limited resources, the Indian healthcare system cannot afford full-dose checkpoint inhibitors, and as a result, fewer than 5% of patients have access to them, explained trial investigators led by Vijay Maruti Patil, MD, a medical oncologist at Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, India. The goal of the trial was to see whether lower, less expensive doses were effective for patients with advanced head and neck cancer. The idea is to increase access by making treatment more [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-01-19T06:40:45-07:00January, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

What is HPV-type throat cancer, and how can it be prevented?

Source: www.washingtonpost.com Author: Lindsey Bever and Marlene Cimons Tennis great Martina Navratilova has been diagnosed with throat and breast cancer, which she described as a “double whammy” to tennis.com Monday. Calling the illnesses “serious but still fixable,” the 18-time Grand Slam singles winner said she was “hoping for a favorable outcome.” Martina Navratilova smiles during a match on May 19, 2019, in London. (Dan Istitene/Getty Images) Navratilova’s Stage 1 throat cancer is related to the human papillomavirus (HPV), the most prevalent sexually transmitted infection in the United States, and the precursor to several cancers. “HPV-related head and neck cancers are increasing dramatically in the United States,” said Otis Brawley, a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University. “The incidence rate has doubled over the last 15 years.” The majority of patients are men, but “anybody can get it,” he said. The Washington Post spoke with several health-care experts to answer common questions about HPV and cancer. What is HPV? HPV is a group of viruses typically transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, including during sexual activity such as oral, anal or vaginal sex. Most people will contract some form of HPV at some point in their lives, experts said. Some people may never know they have it, and the active infection may be short-lived because, in many cases, the body’s immune system suppresses the virus on its own. But in other cases, the virus can lead to certain forms of cancer, including cervical, anal, vaginal and penile and oral cancers. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-01-05T13:06:40-07:00January, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

HPV, PD-L1 move to the forefront of biomarkers for head and neck cancers

Source: www.onclive.com Author: Silas Inman The frontline treatment for patients with head and neck cancer is largely dominated by surgery and radiation therapy, with ongoing efforts to find biomarkers and other strategies to better individualize care. The leading markers used to tailor therapy are human papillomavirus (HPV) status, which typically signals the aggressiveness of the disease, and PD-L1 expression level, which may help guide selection of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy. These markers are gaining notice in different settings. HPV status has broad applicability across head and neck cancers, whereas the clinical utility of PD-L1 expression remains a more nuanced question. HPV-Positive Tumors Approximately 70% of head and neck cancers, specifically oropharyngeal cancers, are positive for HPV, with most cases associated with the HPV-16 subtype. These tumors appear most commonly in nonsmoking White men with a mean age of diagnosis of 60.3 years (SD, 10.8) for oropharyngeal cancer and 63.2 years (SD, 12.7) for other types of head and neck cancers.1,2 Moreover, HPV-positive tumors typically fall into a low- to intermediate-risk category, with 5-year overall survival (OS) outcomes far superior compared with rates for HPV-negative tumors, which are typically caused by smoking. For patients with HPV-associated head and neck cancers, the 5-year OS rate ranges from 75% to 80% compared with 45% to 50% for those with HPV-negative tumors.3 In many cases, although the prognosis is more favorable for patients with HPV-positive tumors, the treatment is the same as it is for HPV-negative tumors. However, with the introduction of ICIs [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-01-05T12:58:57-07:00January, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

Novel agent may improve dry mouth resulting from radiation treatment

Source: www.curetoday.com Author: Colleen Moretti Treatment with AAV2-hAQP1 demonstrated clinically meaningful improvements for patients experiencing symptoms of radiation-induced dry mouth, according to positive results of a phase 1 trial. Radiation-induced xerostomia, or oral dryness, can be a result of treatment with radiotherapy to the oral cavity and neck region – common in patients treated for oral, or head and neck cancers. When this happens, the salivary glands in a patient’s mouth do not make enough saliva to keep it wet. Researchers conducting the AQUAx trial AQUAx evaluated AAV2-hAQP1 in one (unilateral group) or both parotid glands (bilateral group) of 24 patients with radiation-induced salivary hypofunction and moderate to severe dry mouth. “We are very encouraged by the clinical data in both unilateral and bilateral cohorts demonstrating the safety, efficacy and durability of AAV2-hAQP1 in grade 2/3 radiation-induced xerostomia,” said Alexandria Forbes, president and chief executive officer of MeiraGTx, the drug’s manufacturer, in a press release. “Not only does this therapy continue to be safe and well tolerated, but we are seeing durability of effect at two and even three years for patients who have reached those timepoints.” In both groups, 75% of patients reported their dry mouth symptoms as “better” following treatment and rated these improvements as “important” or “very important,” according to the release. Although both groups had improvements, those observed in the bilateral group were greater. Of the 12 patients in the bilateral group, 10 reported “better” dry mouth symptoms after six months. Additionally, these 10 patients rated [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-01-05T12:38:05-07:00January, 2023|Oral Cancer News|