Oral Cancer News – Page 254

Mayo oral cancer study shows full tumor genome

Source: www.eurekalert.org Author: public release Mayo Clinic researchers along with collaborators from Life Technologies are reporting on the application of a new approach for sequencing RNA to study cancer tumors. Their findings from a proof-of-principle study on oral carcinomas appear in the current issue of PLoS One, the online science journal. To explore the advantages of massively parallel sequencing of genomic transcripts (RNA), the researchers used a novel, strand-specific sequencing method using matched tumors and normal tissues of three patients with the specific cancer. They also analyzed the genomic DNA from one of the tumor-normal pairs which revealed numerous chromosomal regions of gain and loss in the tumor sample. The key finding of this work was that alterations in gene expression which can arise from a variety of genomic alterations frequently are driven by losses or gains in large chromosomal regions during tumor development. In addition to the specific tumor findings, this study also demonstrated the value of this RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) method. It will allow researchers to measure strand-specific expression across the entire sample's transcriptome. This technology reveals far more detail about genome-wide transcription than traditional microarrays. "This method allows us to investigate genetic changes at a level that we were never able to see before," says David Smith, Ph.D., Mayo Clinic genomics researcher and corresponding author of the study. "This provides us with much more information about alterations during cancer development that could reveal important therapeutic targets. We can more completely understand the relationship between an individual's genome [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-23T13:07:48-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

SIBLING proteins may predict oral cancer

Source: www.scienceblog.com Author: staff The presence of certain proteins in premalignant oral lesions may predict oral cancer development, Medical College of Georgia researchers said. SIBLINGs, or Small Integrin-Binding Ligand N-linked Glycoproteins, are a family of five proteins that help mineralize bone but can also spread cancer. SIBLINGs have been found in cancers including breast, lung, colon and prostate. "Several years ago we discovered that three SIBLINGs -- osteopontin, bone sialoprotein and dentin sialophosphoprotein -- were expressed at significantly high levels in oral cancers," said Dr. Kalu Ogbureke, an oral and maxillofacial pathologist in the MCG School of Dentistry. "Following that discovery, we began to research the potential role of SIBLINGs in oral lesions before they become invasive cancers." The study, published online this week in the journal Cancer, examined 60 archived surgical biopsies of precancerous lesions sent to MCG for diagnosis and the patients' subsequent health information. Eighty-seven percent of the biopsies were positive for at least one SIBLING protein -- which the researchers discovered can be good or bad, depending on the protein. For instance, they found that the protein, dentin sialophosphoprotein, increases oral cancer risk fourfold, while bone sialoprotein significantly decreases the risk. "The proteins could be used as biomarkers to predict [the potential of a lesion to become cancerous]," said Dr. Ogbureke, the study's lead author. "That is very significant, because we would then be in a position to modify treatment for the individual patient's need in the near future." Precancerous oral lesions, which can develop in [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-23T12:59:57-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Journal of Nuclear Medicine: 18F-FDG PET+CT cost-effective in screening head and neck cancer patients

Source: www.healthimaging.com Author: staff Whole-body 18F-FDG PET combined with chest CT is cost-effective in pretreatment screening for distant metastases in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients with risk factors, according to a study published in the February issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. The presence of distant metastases at initial evaluation influences the prognosis and the treatment choice in HNSCC patients and hybrid PET/CT scanners was superior in sensitivity and cost effective when compared to FDG PET and CT alone, according to Otto S. Hoekstra, MD, PhD, of the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam. In the study, 145 patients underwent chest CT and whole-body 18F-FDG PET for screening of distant metastases. The researchers analyzed the cost data of 80 patients in whom distant metastases developed or who had a follow-up of at least 12 months. Hoekstra said that cost-effectiveness analysis, including sensitivity analysis, was performed to compare the results of 18F-FDG PET, CT and a combination of CT and 18F-FDG PET. Hoekstra and colleagues identified distant metastases in 21 percent of patients by pretreatment screening. According to Hoekstra and colleagues, CT plus 18F-FDG PET had the highest sensitivity of 63 percent, while 18F-FDG PET had a sensitivity of 53 percent versus 37 percent with CTand positive predictive value of 80 percent versus 75 percent with CT. “CT + 18F-FDG PET resulted in savings between €203 ($303) and €604 ($903) ”, wrote Hoekstra and colleagues. The average costs in the CT + 18F-FDG PET group was found [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-23T12:55:19-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Oral Cancer Foundation donates screening devices to West Virginia Free Clinics

Source: www.prnewswire.com Author: press release In 2009 the Oral Cancer Foundation initiated a program of donating VELscope® Oral Cancer Screening Systems to free clinics. The most recent recipients of this program are two West Virginia clinics: WV Health Right in Charleston, and the Susan Dew Hoff Memorial Clinic in West Milford. "Our intent is to identify free clinics in areas that have a high concentration of people who are both at risk for oral cancer and without the financial means to pay for comprehensive oral exams," said Oral Cancer Foundation founder and executive director Brian Hill. "It is difficult to think of an area that better fits those criteria than West Virginia." The state ranks highest in the country in tobacco usage, and next-to-last in per capita income. In identifying free clinics to be potential recipients of the device which identifies loss of tissue auto-fluorescence, an indicator of abnormal tissues, the Oral Cancer Foundation is careful to ensure that each candidate clinic has at least one dentist on staff who can be trained to use the device and can train other staff members. Oral cancer belongs to the head and neck cancer group, and is often referred to by other names such as; tongue cancer, mouth cancer, tonsil cancer, lip cancer, and throat cancer. While some people think this is a rare cancer, it is not. Approximately 100 people in the U.S. will be newly diagnosed with oral cancer each day, and it takes a life in the U.S. every [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-23T12:46:22-07:00February, 2010|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|

Roger Ebert: the essential man

Source: Esquire Magazine Author: Chris Jones It has been nearly four years since Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw and his ability to speak. Now television's most famous movie critic is rarely seen and never heard, but his words have never stopped. For the 281st time in the last ten months Roger Ebert is sitting down to watch a movie in the Lake Street Screening Room, on the sixteenth floor of what used to pass for a skyscraper in the Loop. Ebert's been coming to it for nearly thirty years, along with the rest of Chicago's increasingly venerable collection of movie critics. More than a dozen of them are here this afternoon, sitting together in the dark. Some of them look as though they plan on camping out, with their coats, blankets, lunches, and laptops spread out on the seats around them. The critics might watch three or four movies in a single day, and they have rules and rituals along with their lunches to make it through. The small, fabric-walled room has forty-nine purple seats in it; Ebert always occupies the aisle seat in the last row, closest to the door. His wife, Chaz, in her capacity as vice-president of the Ebert Company, sits two seats over, closer to the middle, next to a little table. She's sitting there now, drinking from a tall paper cup. Michael Phillips, Ebert's bearded, bespectacled replacement on At the Movies, is on the other side of the room, one row down. The guy who [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-02-23T12:40:29-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Both sides take tobacco fight to Supreme Court

Source: www.thesunnews.com Author: Mark Sherman The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court Friday to allow the government to seek nearly $300 billion from the tobacco industry for a half-century of deception that "has cost the lives and damaged the health of untold millions of Americans." Both sides in a landmark, decade-long legal fight over smoking took their case to the high court Friday. The administration, joined by public health groups, wants the court to throw out rulings that bar the government from collecting $280 billion of past tobacco profits or $14 billion for a national campaign to curb smoking. Friday's filings with the Supreme Court mark the latest phase in a lawsuit that began during Bill Clinton's presidency. Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest tobacco maker, its parent company Altria Group Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., British American Tobacco Investments Ltd. and Lorillard Tobacco Co. filed separate but related appeals that take issue with a federal judge's 1,600-page opinion and an appeals court ruling that found the industry engaged in racketeering and fraud over several decades. In 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the companies engaged in a scheme to defraud the public by falsely denying the adverse health effects of smoking, concealing evidence that nicotine is addictive and lying about their manipulation of nicotine in cigarettes to create addiction. A federal appeals court in Washington upheld the findings. At the same time, however, the courts have said the government is not entitled to collect $280 billion in [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-20T22:40:43-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

New test genetically fingerprints tumors

Source: online.wsj.com Author: Ron Winslow In a fresh advance for the burgeoning field of personalized medicine, researchers have developed a blood test based on the DNA of tumors that could help tailor treatment for individual cancer patients. The report, announced Thursday, represents one of the most tangible examples yet of how the ability to sequence a person's entire genetic code could have a direct impact on patient care. There have been a flurry of reports on new sequencing technology that is yielding enormous amounts of information about genetics and disease, but that has yet to deliver much in the way of new treatment strategies. "For cancer patients there hasn't been much utility so far. This may prove to be one of the first useful approaches," said Victor Velculescu, co-director of the cancer biology program at Johns Hopkins University's Kimmel Cancer Center and senior author of the new study. Much research involving whole-genome sequencing is aimed at finding differences in the individual letters that make up the genetic code. The belief is that those small alterations will point to molecular pathways that regulate disease, which would be potential targets for drug therapies. The Hopkins researchers, writing in the journal Science Translational Medicine, took a different approach. They scanned the DNA of tumors taken from six patients with breast or colon cancer, looking not for tiny DNA changes, but what they call rearrangements in large sections of the genome of tumor cells. The DNA of tumors varies genetically from that of normal [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-20T22:29:37-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Oral cancer’s toll, cruel

Source: CNN Author: Madison Park (CNN) -- It brought a tough, All-Star NBA coach to tears this week. And it stilled the voice of a famous film critic. Head and neck cancers are rare, but known to be severe -- they can strip away a person's voice, distort the face and rob the basic abilities to eat, drink and swallow. The cancer can be so disfiguring, some patients seldom appear in public. In a tear-filled press conference this week, Denver Nuggets coach George Karl announced he has a type of neck and throat cancer. Karl said he will continue to coach, but will miss some games and practices. His type of cancer -- a squamous cell tumor found on his right tonsil -- is the most common and expected to be treatable with radiation and chemotherapy. Also this week, Esquire profiled film critic Roger Ebert, who also had a head and neck cancer. He suffered complications from surgery to treat the cancer that had spread to the salivary gland. The magazine published a full-page photo of the film critic, who no longer has a lower jaw. Ebert spent little time feeling sorry for himself: "If we think we have physical imperfections, obsessing about them is only destructive. Low self-esteem involves imagining the worst that other people can think about you. That means they're living upstairs in the rent-free room," he wrote on his blog after the photo published. While Ebert cannot speak, he continues to lambaste bad movies online. Head and neck [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-02-20T22:24:38-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Study suggests VELscope can help reduce recurrence of oral cancer

Source: www.dentaleconomics.com Author: staff LED Dental has announced a recent study suggests that its VELscope screening system can help surgeons reduce the recurrence rate for oral cancer following surgery. The article, "Tracing the 'At-Risk' Oral Mucosa Field with Autofluorescence: Steps Toward Clinical Impact," was just published in the journal, Cancer Prevention Research. The article was was authored by Catherine F. Poh, Calum E. MacAulay, and Miriam Rosin of the BC Cancer Agency and Lewei Zhang of the University of British Columbia. The study was prompted by numerous previous studies that showed oral cancer recurs in a significant percentage of patients following oral cancer surgery. The study examined the experience of 60 oral cancer surgery patients between 2004 and 2008. Their cancerous lesions were treated with surgical excision alone with a minimum follow-up time of 12 months. For 38 of the 60 patients, the surgeon used a surgical margin that was 10 mm beyond the tumor edge defined by the VELscope exam. Because the VELscope system utilizes fluorescence visualization, or FV, technology, these patients are described in the article as having had FV-guided surgery. The remaining 22 patients--the control group--did not have FV-guided surgery. Instead, the surgeon used a surgical margin that was 10 mm beyond the tumor edge defined by the standard white-light exam. White light exams rely on visual inspection with the naked eye, whereas the VELscope system allows clinicians to discover cancerous and precancerous tissue that might not be apparent to the naked eye. Four years into the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-18T22:37:36-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

VELscope used to screen Olympic athletes for oral cancer

Source: www.dentaleconomics.com Author: staff LED Dental has announced that the VELscope oral cancer screening system is being used to conduct oral cancer screenings for up to 800 athletes at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. The International Olympic Committee mandated that 20% of athletes--up from 10% four years ago--receive a comprehensive examination to include a screening for oral cancer. The device selected to conduct the screenings is the VELscope system, which was developed in British Columbia by LED Dental in collaboration with the British Columbia Cancer Agency. The VELscope has been used to conduct an estimated 3 million screenings in the past year. During the Vancouver Games, a team of 72 dentists and volunteer assistants is anticipated to have approximately 800 athletes sit in their dental chairs not only for oral cancer screenings, but for everything from routine dental care to trauma surgery. Dr. Jack Taunton, co-chief medical officer of the Games, said athletes are so nomadic they tend to defer dental care. So Dr. Taunton is hoping many of them take advantage of the care they can get while in Vancouver and Whistler. "Year-round, the alpine athletes follow winter around the world to train, and they are at higher risk of lip and mouth cancers because of the altitude and sun exposure," he said. "The skin on the lips is thin and poorly protected. The damage is cumulative and you have to consider they are exposed to these intense ultraviolet rays for up to 30 years, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-18T22:31:31-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|