Oral Cancer News

WVU Medicine Head and Neck Cancer Team works to increase tonsil cancer awareness

Source: wvumedicine.org Author: staff, WVU Medicine News Head and neck surgical oncologists at WVU Medicine, the WVU Cancer Institute, and across the country are seeing increased incidences of tonsil cancer. “The majority of tonsil cancers, nearly 70 percent, are caused by human papilloma virus (HPV),” Meghan Turner, M.D., head and neck surgeon in the WVU Medicine Department of Otolaryngology, said. “In the last 10 years, tonsil cancer caused by HPV has become more common than cervical cancer caused by the same virus.” In most cases of HPV infection, the body fights off the virus like it would the common cold. In other cases, the virus remains in the body, increasing the risk of both tonsil and cervical cancer. Unlike cervical cancer, there is no regular screening for tonsil cancer. Most commonly, tonsil cancer is first diagnosed as a nontender mass in the neck. “Another common presentation for tonsil cancer is actually recurrent or persistent tonsil pain in spite of treatment for a throat infection,” Dr. Turner said. “This happens between the ages of 50 and 60. It may seem like recurrent strep throat, but it is uncommon for people in that age range to develop recurrent strep throat. If you’re having pain that isn’t resolved after a course of antibiotics, you should ask your doctor if it could possibly be something like tonsil cancer.” It is also regularly discovered during routine dental visits, appearing as asymmetrical tonsils. Those who have had their tonsils removed by tonsillectomy are not immune to [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-02-05T10:20:45-07:00February, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Trial underway for novel agent plus immunotherapy for HPV-related head and neck cancer

Source: www.curetoday.com Author: Brielle Benyon Results from a phase 2 clinical trial demonstrated promise for the combination of the novel agent PDS0101 plus Keytruda (pembrolizumab) in treating human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated head and neck cancer. As such, the trial will now progress to full enrollment of 54 patients who have not been previously treated with a checkpoint inhibitor. The trial, VERSATILE-002, involves two groups of HPV16-positive patients with head and neck cancer that is either metastatic or has returned after treatment. One group consists of patients who have no prior treatment with checkpoint inhibition immunotherapy, while the other group is made up of 21 patients whose disease failed checkpoint inhibition — assessment for this group is still ongoing. In the checkpoint inhibitor-naïve group, four or more of the 17 patients achieved an objective response, which was classified by a 30% or more reduction in tumor size. “The achievement of this important milestone in the VERSATILE-002 phase 2 clinical trial strengthens the evidence of our novel Versamune platform’s potential ability to induce high levels of tumor-specific CD8+ killer T-cells that attack the cancer to achieve tumor regression,” commented Dr. Lauren V. Wood, Chief Medical Officer of PDS Biotech, the developer of PFS101, in a statement. “The initial data solidifies our belief that PDS0101’s demonstrated preclinical efficacy when combined with Keytruda has the potential to significantly improve clinical outcomes for patients with advanced HPV16-positive head and neck cancers.” PDS0101 works by inducing large quantities of CD4+ helper and CD8+ killer T cells, a [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-02-03T10:51:38-07:00February, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Improving head and neck cancer treatment

Source: www.uc.edu Author: Tim Tedeschi, University of Cincinnati News When the medical community finds a treatment for a particular cancer, the work doesn’t stop. Researchers continue to study how treatments can be improved in order to reduce side effects and the possibility of the cancer recurring. University of Cincinnati researchers are leading a new clinical trial to examine if the combination of a more localized radiation treatment and immunotherapy can be a better treatment for patients with recurrent head and neck cancer. Chad Zender, MD, said head and neck cancers include cancers of the tongue, throat, tonsil and larynx, and about 30%-50% of patients treated through surgery and radiation will have their cancer return. Patients often then undergo additional surgery and/or radiation treatments, which can lead to side effects like problems with speech and swallowing. “The quality of life is significantly less in the patients that require [subsequent] surgery and then radiation with or without chemo,” said Zender, professor in the Department of Otolaryngology in UC’s College of Medicine, director of head and neck surgery and principal investigator for the new trial. Precision radiation Zender said the trial will test a more localized radiation delivery method through a radioactive seed, about the size of a grain of rice that emits an intense amount of radiation to the cancer and only minimal radiation outside to other areas. The radioactive Cesium-131 seeds are implanted directly into the operative site during surgery. This approach in early studies appears to give more localized radiation [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-02-03T10:44:13-07:00February, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Light therapy fast-tracks healing of skin damage from cancer radiation therapy

Source: www.buffalo.edu Author: Marcene Robinson Light therapy may accelerate the healing of skin damage from radiation therapy by up to 50%, according to a recent UB-led study. The research found that photobiomodulation — a form of low-dose light therapy — lowered the severity of skin damage from radionecrosis (the breakdown of body tissue after radiation therapy), reduced inflammation, improved blood flow and helped wounds heal up to 19 days faster. The findings, published Dec. 28 in Photonics, follow prior reports on the effectiveness of light therapy in improving the healing of burn wounds and in relieving pain from oral mucositis caused by radiation and chemotherapy. The research was led by Rodrigo Mosca, visiting fellow from the Nuclear and Energy Research Institute (IPEN) and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, both in Brazil. Carlos Zeituni, professor at IPEN and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, is a senior author. “To our knowledge, this is the first report on the successful use of photobiomodulation therapy for brachytherapy,” says senior author Praveen Arany, assistant professor of oral biology, UB School of Dental Medicine. “The results from this study support the progression to controlled human clinical studies to utilize this innovative therapy in managing the side effects from radiation cancer treatments.” Brachytherapy is a form of radiation therapy where a radiation source is implanted within the cancer tissue, exposing surrounding healthy tissue to lower doses of radiation than through teletherapy, a form that fires a beam of radiation through the skin to [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-02-01T13:09:33-07:00February, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

World’s brightest x-rays reveal COVID-19’s damage to the body

Source: National Geographic Date: January 26th, 2022 Author: Michael Grashko Featured Image by National Geographic: The Human Organ Atlas project, an international team including ESRF staff scientist Paul Tafforeau, has used HiP-CT to scan the organs of COVID-19 victims, including their brains. HiP-CT scans can zoom in from a whole-organ scan to provide a cellular view of regions of interest. When Paul Tafforeau saw his first experimental scans of a COVID-19 victim’s lung, he thought he had failed. A paleontologist by training, Tafforeau had been laboring with a team strewn across Europe for months to turn a particle accelerator in the French Alps into a revolutionary medical scanning tool. It was the end of May 2020, and scientists were anxious for a better view of the ways human organs were being ravaged by COVID-19. Tafforeau had been tasked with developing a technique that could make use of the powerful x-rays generated at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France. He’d pushed boundaries on high-resolution x-rays of rock-hard fossils and desiccated mummies as an ESRF staff scientist. Now, he was dismayed by a lump of soft, squishy tissue. But when his colleagues caught their first glimpse of the lung scans, they felt something else: awe. The images presented them with richer detail than any medical CT scan they’d seen before, allowing them to bridge a stubborn gap in how scientists and doctors can visualize—and make sense of—human organs. “In anatomy textbooks, when you see, This is the large scale, [...]

Charlotte Parker2022-01-27T17:32:06-07:00January, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Reduced Radiation Dose After Surgery May Improve Survival Rates in HPV-Related Throat Cancer

Author: Darlene Dobkowski, MA Source: www.curetoday.com A recent study demonstrated that a lower dose of radiation after surgery for HPV-related throat cancer may provide a greater benefit than a higher dose of radiation with chemotherapy. Transoral robotic surgery followed by low-dose radiation may reduce treatment intensity and improve long-term quality of life compared to usual care, which consists of high-dose radiation and chemotherapy, in patients with HPV-associated throat cancer, recent study findings demonstrate. Positive results from the E3311 study led by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group may have been related to the ability of researchers to categorize patients by risk before undergoing surgery. “The study was very helpful in that it gave us a big national sample of people getting transoral surgery,” said Dr. Barbara Burtness, a professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, lead of the Head/Neck Cancer Research Program at Yale and a co-leader of the Developmental Therapeutics Program at the Yale Cancer Center, in an interview with CURE®. “It helped us to understand if our rules for deciding who was low risk, intermediate risk and high risk reflected the real natural biology of the cancer. I think that they gave us the first signs that with pathologic staging in HPV-associated cancer, you can actually reduce the intensity of the postoperative treatment. So we actually reported extremely remarkable results.” Increased Incidence of HPV-Associated Throat Cancer Over the past few decades, there has been an increase in throat cancer associated with HPV, which is usually transmitted through sexual [...]

OCF News Team - B2022-01-21T09:37:46-07:00January, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

New MSK Radiation Approach Means Fewer Side Effects for More Patients with HPV-Related Oral Cancer

Source: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Date: January 20th, 2022 Robert Rosenfeld thought the lump he felt in his neck in late 2018 was just a symptom of a cold that wouldn’t go away. He visited an ear, nose, and throat specialist who saw nothing upon first examination, but Robert knew something was wrong and asked for a CT scan. The specialist called him with the bad news: It was almost certainly cancer. A biopsy confirmed he had stage 2 cancer at the base of his tongue (classified as oral cancer) and 2 nearby lymph nodes. The tumor was positive for the human papillomavirus (HPV). Robert, then a 69-year-old car salesman on Long Island, met with cancer doctors near his hometown of Hauppauge, New York, to learn about treatment options. He realized he faced a tough road: Standard treatment would be 7 weeks of radiation, during which he also would receive 3 rounds of chemotherapy. The standard radiation dose would likely cause mouth sores, difficulty swallowing, dry mouth (from damage to salivary glands), loss of taste, and nausea. Robert wanted a second opinion, and his medical oncologist strongly recommended Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. When Robert called, he was able to get in to see radiation oncologist C. Jillian Tsai the very next day. “When I met Dr. Tsai, she was amazing,” Robert says. “She told me what I was up against but also that the cancer I had was curable.” There was another major plus: Dr. Tsai was able [...]

Charlotte Parker2022-01-20T13:36:01-07:00January, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

New MSK radiation approach means fewer side effects for more patients with HPV-related head and neck cancer

Source: www.mskcc.org Author: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Robert Rosenfeld thought the lump he felt in his neck in late 2018 was just a symptom of a cold that wouldn’t go away. He visited an ear, nose, and throat specialist who saw nothing upon first examination, but Robert knew something was wrong and asked for a CT scan. The specialist called him with the bad news: It was almost certainly cancer. A biopsy confirmed he had stage 2 cancer at the base of his tongue and 2 nearby lymph nodes. The tumor was positive for the human papillomavirus (HPV). Robert, then a 69-year-old car salesman on Long Island, met with cancer doctors near his hometown of Hauppauge, New York, to learn about treatment options. He realized he faced a tough road: Standard treatment would be 7 weeks of radiation, during which he also would receive 3 rounds of chemotherapy. The standard radiation dose would likely cause mouth sores, difficulty swallowing, dry mouth (from damage to salivary glands), loss of taste, and nausea. Robert wanted a second opinion, and his medical oncologist strongly recommended Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. When Robert called, he was able to get in to see radiation oncologist C. Jillian Tsai the very next day. “When I met Dr. Tsai, she was amazing,” Robert says. “She told me what I was up against but also that the cancer I had was curable.” There was another major plus: Dr. Tsai was able to offer a significantly reduced radiation [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-01-20T12:49:57-07:00January, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Squamous cell carcinoma: A pathology case report follow-up

Author: Stacey L. Gividen, DDS Source: www.dentistryiq.com Remember that case about the pathology on the right posterior lateral border of the tongue that had some “meat” to it? The lesion was small, caused no discomfort, and would have gone on to be something much worse had it not been caught early. What was the definitive? Well, as suspected, it was cancer—squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) to be exact. Refreshers regarding pathology are always good for us, so take a quick second and read up on this type of cancer that is more common than you think. Chances are, you’ve diagnosed this before; if you haven’t, keep looking because at some point in your career, you will. Stats/General Information 1 What is SCC? It’s an end-stage alteration in stratified squamous epithelium, beginning as an epithelial dysplasia until the dysplastic epithelial cells breach the basement membrane and invade the connective tissue. Another common name is epidermoid carcinoma. SCC represents 3% of all cancer in males, 2% in females. The survival rate is 50% SCC is the most common malignant neoplasm of the oral cavity, representing approximately 90% of all oral cancers. Etiologic factors: Tobacco habit, Alcohol consumption Viruses Actinic radiation Immunosuppression Nutritional deficiencies Preexisting diseases Chronic irritation. Treatment 1 Clinical staging of the head and neck using the TNM system (T = primary tumor; N = regional lymph node; M = distant metastasis). There is a specific system for the oral cavity. Treatment is by surgical excision, radiation therapy, and if extensive enough, [...]

OCF News Team - B2022-01-16T11:12:45-07:00January, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Multimedia education platform appears effective in head and neck cancer

Source: www.cancernetwork.com Author: Ariana Pelosci Use of a multimedia education platform appeared to compliment traditional education methods and provide complementary information on treatment and recovery for those with head and neck cancer. Multimedia education platforms appear to be effective in conveying information on treatment, recovery process, mental health, family life, and supplementary services for patients with head and neck cancer, according to a study (NCT04048538) published in JAMA Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. Patients who were given information via the education platform had an 11.3-point (Cohen d = 1.02; control group score, 61.1 of 80; treatment group score, 72.4 of 80) difference in 1 month in postoperative satisfaction. Despite both patients groups reporting to have received an adequate amount of information with regard to their disease, those in the treatment arm reported having more satisfaction with information regarding medical tests, treatments, and other services. “This randomized clinical trial found that use of a multimedia patient education platform increased patient satisfaction in individuals who were undergoing head and neck surgery. Leveraging novel information technologies during the perioperative period is a feasible, accessible, and effective intervention to address existing inadequacies in traditional, clinician-led surgical counseling,” the investigators wrote. At baseline, 121 patients completed the evaluations. Among this population, 100 patients, including 50 in the treatment and 50 in the control arm, completed the postoperative questionnaire 1 month following surgery and were included in the statistical analysis. Patients had similar characteristics between groups, but those in the control arm had fewer patients who [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2022-01-14T09:29:33-07:00January, 2022|Oral Cancer News|