Oral Cancer Foundation News Team – A – Page 19

‘A window into the body’: new tool available locally for fight against head and neck cancers

Source: www.theunion.com Author: Mary Beth TeSelle, Sponsored Content Cancers of the head and neck are not only devastating to those living with them, but also challenging to the physicians diagnosing and treating them. Spotting the cancer can be difficult due to the location, and monitoring the cancer as it grows is not possible without advanced equipment. The team at the Dignity Health Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Community Cancer Center now has a vital new tool in the fight against head and neck cancers — a scope that allows doctors to not only spot the cancer better, but also monitor its changes and growth over time. “In its first year, our new scope has aided in cancer detection and surveillance in over 25 local cancer patients,” says Clayton Hess, MD, radiation oncologist with SNMH. The technical name for the new scope is a flexible nasopharyngoscope. “It provides a window into the body,” says Dr. Hess. “Put simply, this nose-pharynx-scope is a fiber optic camera mounted on the tip of a thin robotic sleeve. It’s tip is lubricated and slid inside the nostril to allow doctors to see inside the head and neck by passing through the nose into the space behind the nose and mouth called the pharynx.” Images of the inside of the nose, sinuses, tonsils, tongue base, voice box, and the airway are projected through the camera onto a screen and recorded as digital movie files. Collected over time, these files allow the highest level of cancer detection and [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-06-01T06:55:31-07:00June, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Smoking behaviors often continued after treatment for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

Source: www.oncologynurseadvisor.com Author: Vicki Moore, PhD Many patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) who were daily smokers at the time of diagnosis continued smoking following treatment, according to study results reported in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery. The study was a prospective cohort analysis of patients treated at an academic tertiary care center from January 2009 through December 2017. Eligible patients had received a new diagnosis of HNSCC and were daily smokers at the time of diagnosis, with a habit of 5 cigarettes smoked per day for 5 or more years. The researchers performing the study collected demographic and clinical data for these patients, as well as data from patient reports of smoking-related behaviors. Those included in the study had 24 months of post-treatment follow-up data. A total of 89 smokers with HNSCC had completed follow-up and were included in the analysis. They had a mean age at enrollment of 60.1 years. Multiple racial and ethnic groups were represented in the study population. Approximately half of the patients had been treated with surgery (50.6%), while others received chemoradiotherapy (49.4%). The oropharynx was the primary tumor site in 39.3% of patients, compared with the larynx in 23.6% and the oral cavity in 22.5%. Patients had a mean smoking habit of 14.7±10.0 cigarettes smoked per day and a mean duration of 23.1±18.6 years of tobacco use. At 6 months after treatment, 58.4% of the patients continued smoking. The percentage of patients still smoking at 12 months was 52.8%, at [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-06-01T06:46:49-07:00June, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

NF-κB over-activation portends improved outcomes in HPV-associated head and neck cancer

Source: medicalxpress.com Author: staff, Impact Journals LLC A new research paper has been published in Oncotarget, titled "NF-κB over-activation portends improved outcomes in HPV-associated head and neck cancer." Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a devastating disease that impairs fundamental tissues involved in respiration, phonation and digestion. HNSCC is primarily caused by exposure to either ethanol and tobacco or the human papillomavirus (HPV). Among patients with HPV+ HNSCC, there is a growing clinical demand to develop robust stratification tools to accurately identify patients with good or poor prognosis. According to the research, "While oncologic outcomes for HPV+ HNSCC are generally favorable, treatment paradigms developed for HPV-negative disease burden many survivors of HPV+ HNSCC with lifelong debilitating treatment-associated side effects. On the other hand, ~30% of HPV+ HNSCC patients exhibit a more aggressive disease course and suffer recurrence." Somatic mutations or deletions in TRAF3 or CYLD identified a subset of HPV+ HNSCC associated with improved outcome. A cross talk between canonical and non-canonical NF-κB signaling suggests that TRAF3 and CYLD affect both NF-κB pathways. "Herein, we demonstrate that an RNA-based classifier trained on tumors harboring these mutations may improve prognostic classification," state the researchers. To improve on genomic classification, the researchers designed the current study to provide a foundation for development of NF-κB related, RNA based classification strategies to better identify HPV+ HNSCC patients with good or poor prognosis that could potentially aid in future efforts towards treatment personalization. "This report validates and expands on our findings that significant [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-05-26T07:49:55-07:00May, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Revolutionary cancer tool can halve time some patients need radiotherapy

Source: www.nzherald.co.nz Author: Joe Pinkstone, Daily Telegraph UK A revolutionary cancer tool that can halve the time some patients need to be subjected to radiotherapy has been developed by British experts and is 99.9 per cent accurate. Head and neck cancers are notoriously tricky to tackle as the tumour and the patient's face often change shape during treatment due to significant weight loss. More than 12,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with head or neck cancer every year and the treatment involves being blasted with radiation to shrink a tumour while the patient lies motionless inside a mask that protects healthy tissue. "When I started training, we basically laid someone down on the bed, put a plastic mask on them and took some X-rays from the front and the side," Prof Kevin Harrington, head of radiotherapy and imaging at the Institute of Cancer Research and a consultant oncologist, told The Telegraph. "We would then blast away at them every day for six or seven weeks, treating the same area irrespective of the fact that during the treatment the patient would lose up to 10 per cent of their body weight. "Their body would shrink, the shape of the area we were radiating would shrink and as they subsided and lost weight the position of their head would slightly change and we wouldn't adjust one iota to that, we just carried on the way we were." In an ideal world, Harrington said, scans would be done every day to create [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-05-23T13:11:09-07:00May, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Gabapentin may cut opioid needs for oral mucositis pain during radiotherapy

Source: medicalxpress.com Author: staff For patients receiving concurrent chemoradiotherapy for squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, higher doses of gabapentin are well tolerated and associated with delayed time to first opioid use for additional pain control during radiotherapy (RT), according to a research letter published online May 18 in JAMA Network Open. Sung Jun Ma, M.D., from the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, and colleagues performed a secondary analysis of two clinical trials involving 92 patients receiving concurrent chemoradiotherapy for nonmetastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck and prophylactic oral gabapentin (titrated to 900 mg versus 2,700 mg daily in one study and 3,600 mg daily in the other study). The researchers found that most patients tolerated gabapentin per protocol. The time to first opioid use for additional pain control was greatest in the 3,600-mg cohort in the multivariable competing risks model. The smallest proportion of patients requiring opioids during RT was seen in the 3,600-mg cohort compared with the 900-mg and 2,700-mg cohorts (37.5, 93.1, and 61.3 percent, respectively). Compared with the 3,600-mg cohort, the odds of feeding tube placement were significantly greater during RT in the 2,700-mg cohort; the odds were not significantly greater in the 900-mg cohort. "Although gabapentin, 3,600 mg, daily has been adopted as the standard regimen of the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, additional studies are warranted to further investigate its role in pain control," the authors write.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-05-23T13:00:13-07:00May, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

New discovery could help combat side effects of cancer immunotherapy

Source: news.liverpool.ac.uk Author: staff Researchers in Liverpool and the US have made a breakthrough that could lead to improved immunotherapy treatments for some cancer patients. Their findings, which have been published in Nature, provide critical clues to why many immunotherapies trigger dangerous side effects – and point to a better strategy for treating patients with solid tumours, such as head and neck cancers. The work was led by Professor Christian Ottensmeier, Professor of Immuno-Oncology at the University of Liverpool and a Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, and Professor Pandurangan Vijayanand at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California. Immunotherapy side effects While immunotherapy has revolutionised the world of cancer treatment, long term disease control is achieved in only around 20 to 30 percent of patients with solid cancers. Immunotherapy can also come at a cost as many patients develop serious problems in their lungs, bowel, and even skin during treatment. These side effects can be debilitating and may force physicians to stop the immunotherapy. When head and neck patients started showing adverse side effects during an immunotherapy trial sponsored and funded by Cancer Research UK’s Centre for Drug Development in a number of cancer centres across the UK, the researchers went back through the data and worked with patient samples to see what went wrong. The patients had been given an oral cancer immunotherapy called a PI3Kδ inhibitor, which are new to the cancer immunotherapy scene, but hold promise for their ability to inhibit “regulatory” T [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-05-07T06:27:23-07:00May, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Gene mutations that contribute to head and neck cancer also provide ‘precision’ treatment targets

Source: www.sciencedaily.com Author: Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University About one-fifth of often deadly head and neck cancers harbor genetic mutations in a pathway that is key to normal cell growth, and scientists report those mutations, which enable abnormal cancer cell growth, can also make the cancer vulnerable. Keys to targeting that vulnerability include individualized genomic analysis to identify a patient's specific mutation, and finding the drugs that directly target it, investigations that should be given more attention in cancer therapy development, they report in a review article in the journal NPJ Genomic Medicine. The MAPK pathway is a "signaling hub" for cells important to the usual development of the head and neck region, and activating key pathway constituents, like the genes MAPK1 and HRAS, is known to drive the growth of a variety of cancers, says Dr. Vivian Wai Yan Lui, molecular pharmacologist and translational scientist at the Georgia Cancer Center and Medical College of Georgia and the paper's corresponding author. But the mutations in the genes in the MAPK pathway that enable tumor growth can also make it sensitive to drug therapy, says Lui. While a lot of discovery is still needed to find more mutations in the MAPK pathway and the drugs that target them, Lui says they are among the most logical treatment targets for this tough-to-treat cancer. As she speaks, she is looking in her lab for drugs that kill head and neck primary tumors from patients, and at the genetics behind how they [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-04-29T05:28:58-07:00April, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Rebuilding a jaw in a day

Source: www.eurekalert.org Author: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Patients who lose a part of their jaw — whether from injury, infection, disease, or as a side effect of cancer treatment—can have the missing jawbone replaced through reconstruction. But most are left with a life-altering dilemma: Their new jaw is missing its teeth. That isn’t the case, however, for those treated by Cedars-Sinai’s “jaw-in-a-day” team. The team—a partnership between Cedars-Sinai and the Los Angeles Center for Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery—is one of just a handful across the country performing a relatively new procedure where patients receive a jaw replacement complete with dental implants in one surgery. “People who have a traditional jaw reconstruction get a new jawbone, but it isn’t very functional,” said oral/maxillofacial surgeon Steven Kupferman, DMD, MD. “The jaw is meant to talk and chew, and without teeth, it can’t do those things as well.” A Tricky Reconstruction In the traditional jaw-replacement procedure—called fibula free flap surgery—the surgeon replaces the damaged jawbone with a section of bone cut from the fibula, the outer bone in the lower leg, which can be removed without compromising the patient’s ability to walk. It is possible for patients to have dental implants added to the jaw in a separate procedure, but head and neck surgeon Jon Mallen-St. Clair, MD, PhD, who has performed many fibula free flap procedures, said that rarely happens. “The patient may be worn out from going through that major reconstruction operation,” Mallen-St. Clair said. “And the oral surgeon could be worried [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-04-28T11:01:57-07:00April, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Could blocking or deleting a protein help prevent common oral cancers?

Source: www.eurekalert.org Author: Boston University The most common head and neck cancer—oral squamous cell carcinoma—often starts off, as many other cancers do, quite innocently. Perhaps as a little white patch in the mouth or a small red bump on the gums. Easy to ignore, to downplay. But then something changes, and the little blotch becomes more ominous, starts growing, burrowing into connective tissue. Patients who are lucky enough to see a dentist before things take a nasty turn have a shot at being able to prevent the lesions from turning cancerous—or can at least make sure treatment starts when it’s most effective. But for those who aren’t that lucky, the outlook can be bleak: the five-year survival rate of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is around 66 percent. More than 10,000 Americans die of oral cancer every year; smokers and drinkers are hardest hit. Now, researchers at Boston University’s Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine have found that dialing back—or even genetically deleting—a protein that seems to spur the cancer’s growth might help limit a tumor’s development and spread. They say their findings make the protein, an enzyme called lysine-specific demethylase 1, a potential “druggable target”—something that doctors could aim chemo and immuno-oncology therapies at to take down a tumor. The study was published in February in Molecular Cancer Research. Given that at least one-third of Americans don’t visit a dentist regularly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the discovery could be a future lifesaver for [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-04-26T12:24:48-07:00April, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Researchers find new treatment combo effective for head and neck cancer

Source: nocamels.com Author: Simona Shemer Israeli researchers have helped to develop a new treatment combination for patients with advanced or metastatic head and neck cancer (HNC). The treatment, which uses both a targeted drug and immunotherapy following a certain sequence and within a specific time frame, blocks a signaling pathway that suppresses the immune system and keeps it from fighting tumor cells. The research was conducted by an international team of scientists led by PhD student Manu Prasad in the laboratory of Prof. Moshe Elkabets of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Their findings were just published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer in a study co-authored by Israeli, Chinese, French, German, and US researchers. The researchers targeted an aggressive type of HNC which is driven by the hyperactivation of a specific signaling pathway that will not allow the immune system to kill tumor cells. This was found in more than 40 percent of HNC cases. Head and neck cancers include cancer in the larynx (voice box), throat, lips, mouth, nose, and salivary gland, or malignant tumors that arise from the lining of the head and neck regions. The treatments currently available treatments are ineffective, Prof. Elkabets tells NoCamels. HNC develops in multiple sites on a person and existing treatments, which include chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy have a relatively low response rate of about 20 percent. The average survival rate for patients in Stage III or IV of the disease is only about [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-04-09T09:44:07-07:00April, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

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