2023 August

New classification method for HPV-associated head and neck cancers

Source: www.techexplorist.com Author: Vidya Nagalwade Over the past few decades, the number of cases of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) related to the human papillomavirus (HPV+) has risen significantly and is still rising. The human papillomavirus (HPV) has been linked to an increase in cancer of the throat and tonsils, which is projected to become the most common form of head and neck cancer by 2030. Identifying the right patients with HPV-related cancers is a major challenge in reducing treatment intensity. A new study identifies a subclass of HPV+ head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC). It shows that treatment depends on the tumor type. The data show two distinct subtypes of HPV+ HNSCC, each with its features and treatment responses. The researchers examined data from 104 HPV+ HNSCC tumors and two publically available sources to find gene expression patterns that might reliably distinguish distinct tumor types. Among the 22 modules tested, one accurately classified HPV+ HNSCC tumors based on a different gene expression pattern. The NFKB classifier accurately predicted a favorable result in patients treated in the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group trial E1308, even with low-dosage radiation. Barbara Burtness, a Professor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine, said, “This discovery opens new opportunities for treatment personalization, as we can now better understand the distinct requirements for tumor development in each subclass.” The findings have significant clinical implications. Clinicians treating HPV+ HNSCC are constantly looking for biomarkers that can be used to determine treatment intensity. The new [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-08-13T05:14:01-07:00August, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

AI-driven muscle mass assessment could improve care for head and neck cancer patients

Source: medicalxpress.com Author: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have found a way to use artificial intelligence (AI) to diagnose muscle wasting, called sarcopenia, in patients with head and neck cancer. AI provides a fast, automated, and accurate assessment that is too time-consuming and error-prone to be made by humans. The tool, published in JAMA Network Open, could be used by doctors to improve treatment and supportive care for patients. "Sarcopenia is an indicator that the patient is not doing well. A real-time tool that tells us when a patient is losing muscle mass would trigger us to intervene and do something supportive to help," says lead author Benjamin Kann, MD, a radiation oncologist in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center. Head and neck cancers are typically treated with combinations of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. The treatments can be curative, but they also can have harsh side effects. Patients sometimes have trouble drinking and eating during and after treatment, leading to poor nutrition and sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is associated with an increased chance of needing a feeding tube, having a lower quality of life, and worse outcomes in general, including earlier death. "Muscle mass is a very important indicator of health," says Kann. "People with more muscle mass are generally healthier and more robust." Doctors can assess muscle mass by analyzing computed tomography (CT) scans of the abdomen or the neck. CT scans of the neck are common and frequent for patients with head and [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-08-13T05:04:36-07:00August, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer research specialist believes uptake in HPV vaccine should be higher

Source: www.mayonews.ie Author: Anton McNulty Parents are potentially harming their children's health by not signing them up to receive the HPV vaccine, which protects against cancer in both males and females. That is the opinion of Martin Clynes, Emeritus Professor of Biotechnology in Dublin City University, who has spent his life researching cancer cells and how they develop in the body. The HPV vaccine is currently available free of charge to all second level students to protect against cervical cancer in women as well as other cancers. The free school-based vaccination programme started in 2010 but uptake of the vaccine slowed around 2016 when some parents established lobby groups because of concerns raised about the vaccine's safety. The current uptake is at 76 percent for the first dose and 65 percent for the second dose. Last year the scheme was extended to women under 25 years of age following a campaign from Bernie and Larry Brennan, parents of the late Laura Brennan who campaigned for higher uptake of the HPV vaccine before her death from cervical cancer in 2019, aged 26. Despite the European Medicines Agency (EMA) dismissing any long-term effects caused by the vaccine, Prof Clynes believes that the uptake is not as good as it should be. Speaking to The Mayo News ahead of a talk he gave on cancer as part of the Féile Chill Damhnait festival on Achill last Wednesday evening, Prof Clynes said parents should get their children to take the vaccine. Scare stories “I [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-08-13T04:59:38-07:00August, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

PET/CT follow-up may confer survival benefit in head and neck cancer

Source: www.cancertherapyadvisor.com Author: Andrea S. Blevins Primeau, PhD, MBA Annual follow-up with 18FDG-PET/CT can improve survival, as compared to conventional follow-up, in patients with head and neck cancer, according to study results published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers found that this survival benefit was driven by patients with advanced disease and those with oropharyngeal tumors. This study included 782 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) who were treated with curative intent during 2006-2019. Their median age was 61 (range, 32-95) years, and 82.1% of patients were men. The most common tumor site was the oropharynx (35.3%), followed by the larynx (24.8%), oral cavity (21.6%), and hypopharynx (15.5%). Most patients had stage IV disease (55.2%), followed by stage I (17.8%), stage III (15.5%), and stage II (11.3%). Exactly half of patients underwent surgery, and half received radiotherapy. The patients underwent 18FDG-PET/CT follow-up (n=497) or conventional follow-up (n=285). In both groups, follow-up included clinical examination every 2 months for the first year, every 3 months during year 2, and every 4 months during year 3, as well as imaging at 12 months, 24 months, and 36 months. Imaging consisted of chest CT in the conventional group and 18FDG-PET/CT in the other group. Over 3 years of follow-up, 111 relapses occurred, of which 62 (55.9%) were detected by 18FDG-PET/CT in patients who were asymptomatic. The subclinical recurrence detection rate was 12.4% with 18FDG-PET/CT. Of all subclinical recurrences, 18FDG-PET/CT revealed 58.1% at the 12-month follow-up, 30.6% at 24 months, and 11.3% [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-08-11T05:16:48-07:00August, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

Finding reconstructive solutions

Source: www.sydney.edu.au Author: George Dodd for Sydney Alumni Magazine They house the parts we need to see, hear, eat and breathe. Our heads and necks are machines for living but also subject to cancers that can destroy it all. New technology has changed all that. Nicola Salmond’s first thought was that the small ulcer inside her mouth was caused by her wisdom teeth. Her wisdom teeth were removed. The ulcer stayed. Then, a biopsy revealed that the ulcer was, in fact, a squamous cell carcinoma. Cancer. Specifically, a mouth cancer that is aggressive and can be life threatening. “People think they’re invincible, right?” says Salmond, a warm and straight-talking person, obviously still disquieted by the memory of the diagnosis. “I’ve never been fitter than I am now in my 40s. Yet there was this thing in my mouth. No symptoms at first, just this thing.” Professor Jonathan Clark in scrubs in front of a blue background, holding a 3D printed mouth piece Determined to stay in the lives of her three young daughters, Salmond joined in the search for a surgeon with the skills to help her. Professor Jonathan Clark (MBiostat ’12) came up early as one of the best in the field of head and neck surgery. Appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2019, Professor Clark is one of a team of highly regarded surgeons at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse in Camperdown, which performs the highest volume of complex head and neck cancer surgery in [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-08-08T06:36:32-07:00August, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

Promising drug that can kill all solid tumor cancers

Source: www.nextbigfuture.com Author: Brian Wang Above – The City of Hope-developed small molecule AOH1996 targets a cancerous variant of the protein PCNA. In its mutated form, PCNA is critical in DNA replication and repair of all expanding tumors. Here we see untreated cancer cells (left) and cancer cells treated with AOH1996 (right) undergoing programmed cell death (violet). (Photo credit: City of Hope) Researchers at City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, today published a new study explaining how they took a protein once thought to be too challenging for targeted therapy, proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), and developed a targeted chemotherapy that appears to annihilate all solid tumors in preclinical research. As the scientists continue to investigate the foundational mechanisms that make this cancer-stopping pill work in animal models, they note that there is an ongoing Phase 1 clinical trial testing the City of Hope-developed therapeutic in humans. Most targeted therapies focus on a single pathway, which enables wily cancer to mutate and eventually become resistant, said Linda Malkas, Ph.D., professor in City of Hope’s Department of Molecular Diagnostics and Experimental Therapeutics and the M.T. & B.A. Ahmadinia Professor in Molecular Oncology. However, the cancer-killing pill Malkas has been developing over the past two decades, AOH1996, targets a cancerous variant of PCNA, a protein that in its mutated form is critical in DNA replication and repair of all expanding tumors. “PCNA is like a major airline terminal hub containing [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-08-07T13:43:23-07:00August, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

Disparities in Oral Cancer: The need for early detection and treatment in the black community

Source: www.everydayhealth.com Author: Oladimeji Ewumi, Medically Reviewed by Walter Tsang, MD of American College of Lifestyle Medicine Oral cancer, also called mouth cancer, is a collective term for cancers that affect the mouth or oral cavity. This form of cancer can develop anywhere in the lips, gums, tongue, salivary glands, inner lining of the cheeks, roof of the mouth, or floor of the mouth. It also affects your oropharynx, which is the back part of your tongue, the roof of your mouth, tonsils, and the back of your throat. According to the American Cancer Society, there are about 54,540 new oral cavity and oropharyngeal cancer cases each year, which translates to 3 percent of all cancer diagnoses in the United States, per the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). Of these, Black Americans are more likely to receive a late diagnosis at an advanced stage of the disease, are less likely to get adequate treatment, and have worse overall survival rates than other racial-ethnic groups, according to a study published in Anticancer Research. The NIDCR reported that the five-year survival rate for oral cancer for Black people is 52 percent, compared with a 70-percent survival rate for white patients — even though there is a higher incidence of oral cancer in white Americans. These reflect a low awareness of oral cancer among Black Americans and hidden biases in the healthcare system. Reasons for Delayed Diagnosis in the Black Community A study published in OTO Open found that Black [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-08-04T13:06:16-07:00August, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

Meet the ‘Young Tongues’— including suburban mom, 48, part of shocking tongue cancer diagnosis boom

Source: www.survivornet.com Author: Danielle Cinone Understanding Head & Neck Cancers Tongue cancer is on the rise among young people in the United States, according to a recent Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program analysis, and among those a diagnosed were a 48-year-old mom from Connecticut and a 22-year-old from England, both who are part of the “Young Tongues” group. Dr. Diana Kirke, an otolaryngologist at Mount Sinai Hospital who recently presented an analysis on “geographic trends in oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma among young individuals,” told TODAY.com, “since 2010, there seems to be a national shift to younger patients developing oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma. There is a very clear rise in patients that are non-smokers and non-drinkers.” Tongue cancer can be caused by a sexually-transmitted virus called HPV, and top experts suggest getting young adults vaccinated. “If I had any advice for you following a cancer diagnosis, it would be, first, to seek out multiple opinions as to the best care,” National Cancer Institute Chief of Surgery Steven Rosenberg told SurvivorNet in an earlier interview, “because finding a doctor who is up to the latest of information is important.” A recent Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program analysis has revealed an oral tongue cancer boom is underway in the United States. Included in this increased incidence is Susan Smith, a 48-year-old mom from Fairfield, Connecticut, who is part of the “Young Tongues” group. Smith didn’t receive her tongue cancer diagnosis until she saw a fourth doctor who [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-08-03T06:22:16-07:00August, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

Focus on: Oral Pathology

Source: www.dentistrytoday.com Author: Ashley Clark, DDS Ashley Clark, DDS, discusses the specialized field of oral pathology—from what an oral pathologist does, to how to become one, and when to refer your patients to one. Q: First, what is an oral pathologist? A: An oral pathologist is a job description that is difficult to define, but we all have one thing in common: We are trained in microscopy to diagnose oral, skin, and jaw lesions. That is the most essential part of the profession that binds us all. We are also trained in clinical oral pathology—how to identify and manage oral diseases. Usually, oral pathologists work in academic institutions. This means we must do a combination of teaching, service, and research. After a decade in academia, I have chosen a transition to private practice, which is a bit rare for our profession. I spend my mornings driving around the city picking up biopsy specimens, then sign-in for cases that I receive from across the country. I also serve on a tumor board with my colleagues specializing in otolaryngology, radiology, speech therapy, prosthodontics, etc. Finally, I will provide about 70 continuing education courses/lectures this year (ranging from one to 16 hours long), which is more than normal. However, teaching is my favorite thing to do, so I tend to keep my schedule packed. Q: When should someone refer to an oral pathologist? A: If you are lucky enough to have an oral pathologist (or an oral medicine specialist) in your area, the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-08-03T06:02:27-07:00August, 2023|Oral Cancer News|

HPV-related head and neck cancer may have two distinct subtypes

Source: www.curetoday.com Author: Brielle Benyon There may be two “intrinsically different subtypes” of HPV-positive head and neck cancer — one of which may be more likely to respond to radiation treatment, according to recent research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We're the first ones to describe these two subtypes,” study author, Dr. Wendell Yarbrough, Thomas J. Dark, distinguished professor of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Cancer Center, said in a press release. “Using this research, we can firmly identify two groups of patients and are able to associate their tumor subtype with treatment outcomes.” The researchers discovered a difference in outcomes between patients with high and low NF-kB activity. Of note, NF-kB is a biomarker that activates the expression of pro-inflammatory genes and plays a role in inflammasome (response to infection- or stress-related stimuli) regulation, according to the National Institutes of Health. “Tumors with high NF-kB activity were more responsive to radiation therapy potentially contributing to improved patient survival,” Yarbrough said. “We know that there's something about activating the NF-kB pathway that makes the tumors more sensitive to radiation therapy, which could explain how and why those patients are surviving better.” These findings, according to the researchers, may help determine which patients should undergo these aggressive treatments, and which patients might fare better with a different approach. HPV-positive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is typically treated with a combination of high-dose radiation and chemotherapy, though this regimen [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2023-08-02T09:35:30-07:00August, 2023|Oral Cancer News|