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Oral Cancer Prevention International alleges that thousands of cancers are likely to result from J&J’s actions to protect its sales of Listerine

Source: www.benzinga.com Author: press release A lawsuit was filed against Johnson & Johnson and its Consumer Products Companies in the United States District Court, District of New Jersey on behalf of Oral Cancer Prevention International, Inc. (OCPI). OCPI is the developer of OralCDx®, a patented, testing protocol that can prevent oral cancer by identifying precancerous (dysplastic) cells in the mouth while they are still harmless. OralCDx® testing can be performed by dentists in addition to otolaryngologists (ENT's), family practitioners, dermatologists, and other physicians. The complaint alleges that in order to protect sales of its mouthwash Listerine, which has been linked to oral cancer, Johnson & Johnson and its Consumer Products Companies intentionally interfered with a February 10, 2010 sales agreement between OCPI and OraPharma, Inc., a specialty oral healthcare company. OraPharma had agreed to obtain the exclusive sales rights for OralCDx® to US dentists. According to Attorney James S. O'Brien, Jr. of Pryor Cashman LLP, who represents OCPI: “The effect of J&J's behavior, based on OraPharma's own projections, is that an estimated 7,300 cases of otherwise preventable oral cancer will occur in the United States over the term of the sales agreement.” According to the National Cancer Institute, over 30,000 Americans are diagnosed with oral cancer each year. It kills approximately as many Americans as melanoma, twice as many as cervical cancer, and is now rapidly rising among women, young people, and non-smokers. In fact there has been a nearly five-fold increase in oral cancer incidence in patients under age [...]

2011-07-25T07:59:00-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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FDA approves REMS for Fentora, Actiq

Source: drugtopics.modernmedicine.com Author: staff FDA has approved the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for Fentora (fentanyl buccal tablet) [C-II] and Actiq (oral transmucosal fentanyl citrate) [C-II]. Both products, manufactured by Cephalon, are indicated for management of breakthrough pain in opioid-tolerant patients with cancer. The goals of REMS are to ensure proper patient selection, to prevent accidental exposure and inappropriate conversion between fentanyl products, and to mitigate the potential risks of misuse, abuse, addiction, and overdose. The newly approved REMS will replace the existing risk management programs for Fentora and Actiq. Under REMS, pharmacies and healthcare professionals who prescribe Fentora and Actiq will enroll by completing an education module and knowledge assessment focused on safety information that includes appropriate patient selection. Prescribers will also educate patients as part of the program. Cephalon expects that enrollment in the REMS program will begin in September. “The (REMS) program provides education and systems to support safe use of Fentora and Actiq, preserving availability of the medicines to patients through retail pharmacies and using other systems already familiar to prescribers and pharmacists,” said Lesley Russell, MB,ChB, MRCP, Cephalon’s chief medical officer. When implemented, the REMS will provide checks and balances within the distribution channel to provide safeguards that will help ensure that the medications are appropriately dispensing to qualifying patients. All stakeholders can enroll in the system any time beginning in September. There will be a transition period of about 6 months following the launch of REMS after which no prescription may be dispensed, [...]

2011-07-25T07:44:34-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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Are lozenges and other smokeless products safer alternatives to smoking?

Source: Pennsylvania's Fox News Tobacco company rep David Howard waxes enthusiastic when he talks about a new product his employer, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., has developed: a pellet of finely cured tobacco, binders and flavoring that dissolves in the mouth in 10 minutes. Under test market in two U.S. cities — Denver and Charlotte, N.C. — Camel Orbs will join two dissolvable tobacco lozenges already on the market if it graduates to broader distribution. And Howard is optimistic it will. "These products provide smokers with an option to enjoy the pleasure of nicotine without bothering others," Howard said. "No secondhand smoke. No spitting. No cigarette butt." Dissolvable tobacco consists of small pieces of compressed, finely ground tobacco powder, binders and flavorings that are shaped into pellets, sticks or strips. When placed in the mouth, they dissolve within minutes, providing a nicotine hit. The tobacco industry says that the products contain far fewer cancer-causing chemicals such as tobacco-specific nitrosamines and are a "harm reduction" strategy that, like electronic cigarettes, might help people turn to less risky tobacco habits or eventually quit smoking. But public health officials and anti-smoking advocates fear that the products will help initiate a new generation of smokers. The flavoring and packaging appeal to children, they argue, and teenagers will gravitate toward a product they can easily hide. On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration will take up the issue with an advisory committee hearing on the effect of dissolvable tobacco products on public health. "Tobacco companies are [...]

2011-07-22T10:44:37-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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Taking out a cancer’s co-dependency: novel compound selectively kills cancer cells by blocking response to oxidative stress

Source: www.eurekalert.org Author: public release A cancer cell may seem out of control, growing wildly and breaking all the rules of orderly cell life and death. But amid the seeming chaos there is a balance between a cancer cell's revved-up metabolism and skyrocketing levels of cellular stress. Just as a cancer cell depends on a hyperactive metabolism to fuel its rapid growth, it also depends on anti-oxidative enzymes to quench potentially toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by such high metabolic demand. Scientists at the Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have discovered a novel compound that blocks this response to oxidative stress selectively in cancer cells but spares normal cells, with an effectiveness that surpassed a chemotherapy drug currently used to treat breast cancer. Their findings, based on experiments in cell culture and in mice, appear online in Nature on July 13. The plant-based compound piperlongumine (PL), derived from the fruit of a pepper plant found in southern India and southeast Asia, appears to kill cancer cells by jamming the machinery that dissipates high oxidative stress and the resulting ROS. Normal cells have low levels of ROS, in tune with their more modest metabolism, so they don't need high levels of the anti-oxidant enzymes that PL stymies once they pass a certain threshold. "Piperlongumine targets something that's not thought to be essential in normal cells," said Stuart L. Schreiber, a senior co-author and director of the Broad's Chemical Biology Program. "Cancer cells have a greater dependence on ROS [...]

2011-07-20T05:21:06-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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Head and Neck Cancer Study

Source: American Journal of Neuroradiology BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Radiographic determination of viable disease in cervical adenopathy following RT for head and neck cancer can be challenging. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the utility of US, with or without FNA, in regard to the postradiotherapy effects on documented metastatic adenopathy in patients with oropharyngeal cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study included 133 patients with node-positive oropharyngeal cancer who were irradiated from 1998 to 2004. Sonographic evaluation was performed within 6 months of completion of radiation. Posttreatment US results were compared with pretreatment CT images and were recorded as the following: progression, suspicious, indeterminate, posttreatment change, or regression (positive) versus nonsuspicious or benign (negative). FNAC was classified as nondiagnostic, negative, indeterminate, or positive. Results of US and US-guided FNAC were correlated with findings at neck dissection and disease outcome. RESULTS: Of 203 sonographic examinations, 90% were technically feasible and yielded a nonequivocal imaging diagnosis. Of 87 US-guided FNAs, 71% yielded a nonequivocal tissue diagnosis. The PPV and NPV of initial posttreatment US were 11% and 97%. Sensitivity and specificity were 92% and 28%. The PPV and NPV of US-guided FNA were 33% and 95%, and the sensitivity and specificity were 75% and 74%. On serial sonographic surveillance, of 33 patients with nonsuspicious findings, only 1 (3%) had neck recurrence. Of 22 patients with questionable findings on CT and negative findings on US, none had a neck recurrence. CONCLUSIONS: In experienced hands, serial US is an inexpensive noninvasive reassuring follow-up [...]

2011-07-18T09:25:41-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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Sanford researcher to study new oral cancer therapy

Source: www.mdnews.com Author: public release A new Sanford clinical trial will study the safety and effectiveness of a drug treatment on patients receiving radiation and chemotherapy for head and neck cancer. About three to five percent of all cancers reported in the United States are head and neck cancers. Although the incidence of this type of cancer is relatively low, survival rates are poor — with about a 50 percent of patients surviving over the five-year period following diagnosis, according to John Lee, MD, FACS, Principal Investigator of the trial and a Sanford Clinic Ear, Nose and Throat specialist. Lee’s early research led to the discovery that mice treated with the generic drug dichloroacetate (DCA) responded to cancer therapy 30 percent better. He has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin a clinical trial with patients who are receiving treatment for head and neck cancer. The trial will be open to Sanford patients, and others nationwide. “We are proud of and continue to encourage innovative clinical trials at Sanford that helps us further understand the molecular, cellular and genetic basis of cancer,” said David Pearce, PhD, Vice President, Sanford Research in Sioux Falls. Dr. Lee, who was honored in 2010 by the American Cancer Society for his research, has been studying the link between the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and the development of head and neck cancers. His research team has tested the treatment of head and neck tumors in mice finding that factors that enhanced the [...]

2011-07-16T11:48:35-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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Polymeric nanoparticles attack head and neck cancer

Source: www.nanowerk.com Author: staff Head and neck cancer, the sixth most common cancer in the world, has remained one of the more difficult malignancies to treat, and even when treatment is successful, patients suffer severely from the available therapies. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a tumor-targeted nanoparticle that delivers high doses of anticancer agents directly to head and neck tumors. Tests in animals have shown that this novel formulation increases survival while triggering fewer side effects. Reporting its work in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery ("Targeted Dendrimer Chemotherapy in an Animal Model for Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma "), a team led by James R. Baker, Jr., created a spherical polymeric nanoparticle known as a dendrimer to deliver the drug methotrexate to head and neck tumors. To target the nanoparticle to those tumors, the investigators decorated the nanoparticle's surface with folic acid. Many tumors, but few healthy cells, produce excessive amounts of a folic acid receptor on their surfaces. Dr. Baker and his colleagues pioneered the use of dendrimers as targeted drug-delivery vehicles with funding from the National Cancer Institute's Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer. The researchers tested their dendrimer-based formulation in three different groups of mice. The control group had tumors grown from human head and neck tumors that did not produce the folic acid receptor. The two experimental groups had tumors grown from human head and neck tumors that expressed moderate and high levels of the folic acid receptor. Mice receiving [...]

2011-07-16T11:43:31-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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MIT and Harvard team gives voice to the voiceless

Source: Popular Science Author: Clay Dillow Call it a silent killer: some 6 percent of the U.S. population has some kind of voice disorder, most of those resulting from scarring of the vocal cords that can lead to diminishing or even total loss of the ability to speak. Giving voice to the voiceless, a team of Harvard and MIT researchers have developed a synthetic, injectable material that can be implanted into scarred vocal cords to restore their function. Rather than approaching the problem as a physiological one, they looked at the vocal cords as a mechanical issue. That is, they didn’t attack the scar tissue in the vocal cords but devised a fix for it. That fix came in the form of a material known as polyethylene glycol (PEG), which they chose because it is already FDA approved for other medical applications. PEG is flexible, both literally an in terms of its manipulability. By playing with the molecular structure of PEG, the researchers were able to dial in on a variation that mimicked the viscoelasticity of human vocal cords. Known as PEG30, it moves very, very similarly to natural vocal tissues (you can see this in the video below). Further, it can restore vibration to vocal cords that have stiffened due to scarring--which is the ultimate goal here. Their PEG30 gel, should it receive its own FDA approval, would be categorized as an injectable medical device rather than a drug, which could further speed it to market. If [...]

2011-07-15T14:40:30-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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HPV Vaccine- Should it be Available for Boys?

Source: Dr.Bicuspid.com July 14, 2011 -- With the alarming rise in the rate of oropharyngeal cancer among men being linked to the human papillomavirus (HPV), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is considering whether to also recommend the HPV vaccine for boys. Two vaccines (Cervarix and Gardasil) are currently available to protect females against the HPV types that cause most cervical cancers. The CDC currently recommends both for 11- and 12-year-old girls and for females 13 through 26 years old who did not get the three recommended doses when they were younger. The number of HPV-related oral cancers cases among men in the U.S. is increasing so quickly they could surpass the number of cases of cervical cancers in women by 2020, according to research presented last month at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago. Between 1984 and 1989, only 16% of oropharyngeal cancers were linked to HPV. But by 2000-2004, HPV was related to 75% of oropharyngeal cancers, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In 2010, the institute estimated that there were 12,660 cases of oropharyngeal cancer, resulting in 2,410 deaths. About half of those cases were among males and at least 75% were caused by HPV, according to NCI researchers. Several studies and oral cancer specialists have attributed the sharp rise in HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancers to an increasing prevalence of oral sex among young people. For the past few years, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has been [...]

2011-07-14T09:53:49-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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Poor oral health can be passed through generations

Source: www.dentistryiq.com Author: staff A new 27-year research project suggests that mothers with poor oral health are likely to have children who also have poor oral health when they reach adulthood. The long-term study of more than a thousand children born in New Zealand in 1972 and 19731 provides strong evidence that the children of mothers with poor oral health are more likely to grow up with above average levels of tooth loss, tooth decay, and fillings. The findings strengthen the notion from previous research that adult oral health is affected by a combination of genetic and environmental factors.2 The research compared the oral health of the children at the age of 5 in 1978, and again at the age of 32. The findings were compared with the mother’s own self-rated oral health measured in 1978. Analysis 27 years later indicated that approaching half of children (45.1%) whose mothers rated their oral health as "very poor" had severe tooth decay. Around four in every 10 children (39.6%) experienced tooth loss in adulthood. The research commented on the influence of environmental risk factors on oral health including socioeconomic status (SES), attitudes, beliefs, and oral health-related knowledge persisting across generations, providing further evidence of how a mother’s view of her own oral health can affect that of her child’s. Chief Executive of the British Dental Health Foundation Dr. Nigel Carter said: "These findings represent important confirmation of a trend that has long been recognised. Work by Per Axelsson in Sweden in the [...]

2011-07-11T14:22:45-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|
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