Oral Cancer News – Page 268

A dynamic oral cancer field: unraveling the underlying biology and its clinical implication

Source: Am J Surg Pathol, November 1, 2009; 33(11): 1732-8 Authors: IF Tsui, C Garnis, and CF Poh Oral cancer is a complex disease that is characterized by histologic and genetic heterogeneity. The evolution and progression of this disease is thought to result from the accumulation of alterations in molecular pathways. Although the oral cavity is accessible for routine screening of suspicious lesions, gene alterations are known to accrue in histologically normal tissues. Therefore, some cancer forerunners may remain undetected clinically or histologically. Recently emerging optical and molecular technologies have provided a powerful means for redefining the extent of the field of alteration. Often this means expanding upon regions detectable with standard white light approaches. In this report, we used a newly developed optical technique, direct fluorescence visualization, to define a contiguous field that extended beyond the margins of a clinically visible oral squamous cell carcinoma. Multiple biopsies were taken within this contiguous optically altered field. Genome alterations detected for each specimen were compared to define whether each lesion arose independently or as a consequence of a shared progenitor cell. Our results indicate that the field effect of oral cancer is extremely dynamic, with different genetic alterations present in different biopsies within a field. This case study also demonstrated that 2 genetically unrelated squamous cell carcinoma could be developed within 10 mm at the right lateral tongue of this patient. These findings provide evidence for the importance to implement optical technologies in defining surgical margins and support the use of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-11-03T09:07:52-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

YM Biosciences reports positive nimotuzumab four-year survival data

Source: www.reuters.com Author: press release YM BioSciences Inc., a life sciences product development company that identifies and advances a diverse portfolio of promising cancer-related products at various stages of development, announced that an oral presentation at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) 2009 Annual Meeting reported positive 48-month survival data for its EGFR-targeting antibody, nimotuzumab. The "BEST" trial was a randomized four-arm study treating patients with inoperable, locoregionally-advanced, stage III/IVa head and neck cancer with radiation alone, chemoradiation alone, or radiation or chemoradiation in combination with nimotuzumab. These data were a follow-up to 30-month survival data presented at ASCO 2009 and demonstrate that the benefit of adding nimotuzumab to radiation and chemoradiation is durable and persists for several years. "These data are convincing evidence that nimotuzumab is an efficacious and safe drug and highlight its potential in the head and neck cancer indication. In this respect we note that the National Cancer Centre of Singapore has initiated a global Phase III trial with nimotuzumab in the adjuvant setting for head and neck cancer patients," said David Allan, Chairman and CEO of YM BioSciences. "Activity of nimotuzumab in the BEST trial was similar to that demonstrated in separate trials with cetuximab in locally advanced head and neck cancer but there was no evidence that nimotuzumab's activity was accompanied by the advanced toxicities of the class." In the ASTRO presentation, Dr. Lokesh Viswanth, Kidwani Memorial Institute of Oncology, Bangalore, India described that the addition of nimotuzumab to radiotherapy (RT) [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-11-03T08:17:42-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Saliva tests may help with disease diagnosis

Source: www.readingeagle.com Author: John Reitz, DDS The Dentist's Chair Jim: With the newly discovered connection between oral health and overall health, is there anything a dentist can tell about my overall health from looking in my mouth? Dr. Reitz: Dear Jim, a dentist can tell if you have gum disease and tooth decay by looking in your mouth, but to determine your overall health he may need a sample of your saliva. Instead of having just a blood test by your physician, your dentist will soon have the ability to diagnosis systemic disease by doing a saliva test. In dental school I was taught that saliva's function was to neutralize acids and help swallow food. We are now finding that saliva is more complex than originally thought, containing over 1,000 different proteins. The question now is why are the proteins there. Recent advances in technology have found saliva contains indicators, either genes or salivary proteins called biomarkers, of systemic disease. Of the 1,000 salivary proteins already identified, only specific proteins are found in patients with systemic disease. Research at the University of California, Los Angeles is expected to get Food and Drug Administration approval within two years for a saliva test that can detect pancreatic cancer. Other studies have found biomarkers for breast cancer, oral cancer, diabetes, arthritis, heart disease and autoimmune disorders. In addition to finding systemic diseases, saliva tests will determine a person's chances of getting tooth decay. Some promising studies have identified biomarkers for a predisposition to [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-11-02T11:20:17-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

CyberKnife to be focus of numerous presentations at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) annual meeting

Source: www.reuters.com Author: press release Accuray Incorporated, a global leader in the field of radiosurgery, announced today that 28 CyberKnife-focused abstracts have been accepted as part of the 51st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), taking place November 1 - 5 in Chicago, Illinois. This represents a 27 percent increase in CyberKnife abstracts over last year's Annual Meeting. The accepted abstracts, which will be presented as posters or oral presentations, focus on the use of the CyberKnife® Robotic Radiosurgery System to treat tumors located throughout the body including the prostate, lung, brain, spine, liver, pancreas, head and neck. "The depth and breadth of research presented at this year's ASTRO meeting is a testament to the growing clinical acceptance of the CyberKnife System and the important role it is playing in the treatment of cancer," said Euan Thomson, Ph.D., president and CEO of Accuray. Highlights of the research that will be showcased include seven presentations focusing on the use of CyberKnife radiosurgery to treat prostate cancer. CyberKnife prostate procedures from July-September 2009 increased 21 percent over the same period the previous year, confirming the increasing demand for this treatment option. To date, CyberKnife radiosurgery has been used to treat more than 4,000 men with prostate cancer. Additionally, Accuray will host a number of presentations in the company's booth reporting on experience with CyberKnife radiosurgery. Presenters include Eric Lartigau, M.D., Ph.D., from Centre Oscar Lambret; Xiaodong Wu, Ph.D., from University of Miami; Donald B. Fuller, M.D., from CyberKnife [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-10-31T10:06:44-07:00October, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Males can get HPV vaccine Gardasil thanks, in part, to Gulfport cancer survivor

Source: St. Petersburg Times Author: John Barry David Hastings' crusade to inoculate boys against a cancer-causing virus that afflicts women — but threatened him, too — has scored a victory. But it's not quite the one he has been fighting for in the past three years. A panel of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week allowed a vaccine to be given to boys and young men that is already used to protect girls and young women from human papillomavirus, HPV, which causes cervical cancer. The panel's vote followed the Food and Drug Administration's recent okay of the vaccine for boys as a protection against genital warts. The vaccine, Gardasil, was approved only for females, ages 9 to 26, in 2006. But research has since linked HPV to many oral cancers in men. Hastings, who owns the Habana Cafe in Gulfport with his wife, Josefa, testified before the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. He told them how HPV was found in a deadly carcinoma in his throat in 2006. It took seven weeks of simultaneous chemotherapy and radiation at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa to arrest the cancer. Ever since, he has spread the message that HPV is a threat to men. He urged the CDC panel to recommend routine vaccinations for boys, as it already does for girls. Hastings and other proponents argued that only 17 percent of girls are completing the series of three doses needed for protection. "We rely on females [...]

Charlotte Parker2009-10-30T10:58:18-07:00October, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Pinter opens up about private battle with cancer

Source: Fairfield Citizen Author: Morgan Thomas In the 31 years that Redding actress Colleen Zenk Pinter has played Barbara Ryan on As the World Turns, her character has been in a coma following an automobile accident, survived a gunshot wound, been burned to a crisp in an explosion and imprisoned for a crime she did not commit -- the stuff of soap writers' fecund imaginations. But when Barbara was "diagnosed" with oral cancer in 2008, the script was ripped from the real life drama of the actress who plays her and fact-checked with the Oral Cancer Foundation, for which Pinter is now the spokesperson. Warning the public about this little-known cancer and about a simple 3--5 minute screening your dentist can do has become a mission for Pinter. "The screening is painless," she said in an interview with the Westport News. "And you don't have to take your clothes off!" Oral cancer kills more people each year than cervical, skin or prostate cancer, yet when found early, there is an 80 to 90 percent survival rate. She took her private health battle public first on the CBS Early Show, filmed a PSA for the Oral Cancer Foundation, a birthday commercial for the American Cancer Society and has spoken before such groups as the 2009 graduating class. University's School of Dentistry. Pinter first noticed that her speech was slurring in December 2005 but her dentist assured the then 52-year-old actress that it was just her teeth shifting. Then in July 2006, [...]

Charlotte Parker2009-10-30T10:13:47-07:00October, 2009|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|

Biodesix: a new way to inform cancer treatment selection

Source: www.rockyradar.com Author: staff "One data point doesn’t tell you very much in most cases,” comments David Brunel, CEO of Biodesix, a medical diagnostics company based in Broomfield, Colorado. This principle guides Biodesix’s approach to developing diagnostics which aim to indentify a patient’s expected response to a particular therapeutic. Biodesix’s technology evaluates multiple biomarkers – identified with a blood sample and analyzed using mass spectrometry – to predict response rather than trying to make a determination based on a single biomarker. VeriStrat® is the company’s first test, categorizing the expected prognosis of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who receive treatment with a class of targeted cancer drugs know as epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors or EGFR-Is. Tarceva (erlotinib) is an EGFR-I commonly used to treat NSCLC patients. VeriStrat classifies patients as either VeriStrat Good or VeriStrat Poor and this information can assist a physician’s decision to pursue treatment with Tarceva or another treatment. To complete a VeriStrat test, a patient’s blood is drawn and sent to the Biodesix lab in Aurora, Colorado. There the sample is run through a mass spectrometer and the data generated from the mass spectrometer is then processed through a proprietary software algorithm to determine a patient’s VeriStrat classification. The algorithm was developed using samples and subsequent disease response data from patients who had received treatment with an EGFR-I. According to Brunel, “several markers were identified in the group of patients whose cancer is prone to respond to EGFR-I treatment versus those whose cancer [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-10-30T05:37:08-07:00October, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Adding chemo helps head, neck cancer patients

Source: HealthDayNews Author: Staff TUESDAY, Oct. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Combining chemotherapy with radiation treatment for patients with advanced head and neck cancer increases their event-free survival to 2.2 years from just one year with radiotherapy alone, finds a new study. According to the study authors, "events" include cancer recurrence, new tumors or death. British researchers looked at the 10-year outcomes of 966 patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer. Those who hadn't undergone surgery for their cancer were randomly assigned to one of four groups: radiotherapy alone (233 patients); two courses of simultaneous (SIM) chemotherapy given at the same time as radiotherapy (166 patients); two courses of chemotherapy after (subsequent -- SUB) completing radiotherapy (160 patients); or both SIM and SUB (154 patients). Patients who'd had surgery were randomly assigned to radiotherapy alone (135 patients) or SIM alone (118 patients). Overall, non-platinum-based chemotherapy given at the same time as radiotherapy reduced deaths and cancer recurrence in patients who hadn't undergone surgery, with acceptable toxicity. But patients who'd undergone surgery didn't benefit from this combined treatment. The researchers also found that chemotherapy given after radiotherapy was ineffective, didn't improve survival, and doubled the rate of toxicity. Among patients who didn't have surgery, median survival time was 2.6 years in the radiotherapy group, and 4.7 years, 2.3 years and 2.7 years, respectively, in patients who received SIM alone, SUB alone, and SIM plus SUB. Median event-free survival among patients who didn't have surgery was one year in the radiotherapy group, 2.2 years in [...]

Charlotte Parker2009-10-30T05:30:39-07:00October, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Curry kills gullet cancer cells

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk Author: Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent Scientists based at the Cork Cancer Research Centre in Ireland treated oesophageal cancer cells with curcumin – a chemical found in the curry spice tumeric. They found that curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours. The cells also began to digest themselves, according to the research, published in the British Journal of Cancer. “Scientists have known for a long time that natural compounds have the potential to treat faulty cells that have become cancerous and we suspected that curcumin might have therapeutic value. "Dr Geraldine O’Sullivan-Coyne, a medical researcher in our lab, had been looking for new ways of killing resistant oesophageal cancer cells. "She tested curcurmin on resistant cells and found that they started to die using an unexpected system of cell messages." Normally, faulty cells die by committing programmed suicide – or apoptosis – which occurs when proteins called caspases are "switched on" in cells. But these cells showed no evidence of suicide and the addition of a molecule that inhibits caspases and stops this ‘switch being flicked’, made no difference to the number of cells which died. This suggested that curcumin attacked the cancer cells using an alternative cell signalling system. Each year around 7,800 people are diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in the UK. Less than 20 per cent of people survive oesophageal cancer beyond five years. It is the sixth most common cause of cancer death and accounts for around five per cent of all UK cancer [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-10-29T07:00:03-07:00October, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Head and neck cancer therapy area pipeline report

Source: www.prminds.com Author: staff Aarkstore announce a new report "Head and Neck Cancer Therapy Area Pipeline Report" through its vast collection of market research report. Head and Neck Cancer Therapy Area Pipeline Report contains detailed information on the head and neck cancer drug pipeline. This report provides insight into the pipeline status of head and neck cancer drugs by company and by stage as well as a summary of the latest news and developments in this area. Scope of the report: Each Life Science Analytics’ Therapy Area Pipeline Report provides the user with real detail on drug pipelines, by company and by stage, for each specific therapy area. The latest news, by company, also ensures that each report is fresh and up-to-date. In addition to new developments and disease specific pipeline projects, each report also contains extensive information in tabular format on a company’s full product pipeline and products by phase of development with regard to the therapy area. Full pipeline details, by stage, are provided and include detailed product descriptions, information on partnering activity plus clinical trial intelligence. Each Therapy Area Pipeline Report also provides detail on the top 20 companies with products in the early stage of development and the top 20 companies with products in the late stage of development. Finally, each report also provides a comparison with other major indications in the disease hub based on Marketed Products vs. Pipeline Products. Key benefits • Understand a company’s strategic position by accessing detailed independent intelligence on its [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-10-28T08:38:58-07:00October, 2009|Oral Cancer News|