Oral Cancer News – Page 323 – The Oral Cancer Foundation News Archive

New York Presbyterian Hospital showcases latest advances and techniques in head and neck surgery

Source: www.marketwatch.com Author: staff Head and neck surgery is a diverse regional subspecialty, whose central focus is treatment of oncologic disorders of the neck. "Neck dissection is relevant to treatment of such disorders as squamous cell cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract, tongue cancer, laryngeal cancer, thyroid cancer, salivary gland cancer, and skin cancers of the head/neck region, including melanoma," explained William I. Kuhel, MD, the Director of the Head and Neck Service, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, and Associate Professor of Clinical Otorhinolaryngology at Weill Cornell Medical School. "For many years, the radical neck dissection was the standard operation for removal of metastatic disease involving the lymph nodes in the neck, but that operation evolved into what are referred to as modified and selective neck dissections, which spare some of the important structures in the neck," said Dr. Kuhel. Salvatore M. Caruana, MD, the Director of the Division of Head and Neck Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, explained further. "The trend these days is to do smaller operations to get the same effect. Over the years it has become clear that certain areas of a radical neck dissection do not have to be included for diseases at specific levels. Our knowledge base has allowed us to make smaller operations to address the same problems." Greater experience has also allowed for more common use of adjuvant therapies, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-10-06T12:35:45-07:00October, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Sister honors her brother by supporting Oral Cancer Foundation

Source: OCF Press Release Author: John Pohl David Nasto was the kind of person many of us wish we could be. He was a surfer. A snowboarder. A kayaker. A bicycler. An artist. A world traveler. A free spirit. Not content to simply be a devoted fan of the Grateful Dead, he also designed their album covers. Simply put, David Nasto loved life, and he lived it on his own terms. David Nasto was also his sister Susan’s hero. So when David developed oral cancer in 2005, Susan decided to learn as much about the disease as she could. And when David passed away the following year, she decided to honor her brother do by doing what she could to help prevent others from suffering the way he suffered. “When David was diagnosed with oral cancer, I was shocked,” said Susan. “He was so athletic, so healthy, and he had never smoked a cigarette in his life. I didn’t think oral cancer struck people like him.” Susan tried to learn as much as she could about the disease, spending much of her free time doing online research. During that process she discovered the website of the Oral Cancer Foundation. “I learned a lot about oral cancer, but the most important thing I learned is the importance of early detection. So when David died, I wanted to find a way to raise money to help increase awareness of the need for everyone to get checked for oral cancer on a regular [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-10-06T20:16:14-07:00October, 2008|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|

American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology selects recipient of first nursing award

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com Author: staff The American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology has selected Peggy Wiederholt, R.N., as the inaugural winner of the ASTRO Nurse Excellence Award, which is awarded to a registered nurse who goes above and beyond the normal standards of nursing practice. Ms. Wiederholt was presented with her award, a $1,000 grant, at the nurses' welcome and orientation luncheon held Sunday, September 21, 2008, at 12:00 p.m. during ASTRO's 50th Annual Meeting in Boston. Ms. Wiederholt is the head and neck oncology nurse coordinator at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center in Madison, Wis., where she is responsible for bridging communication between patients and providers, assisting patient needs, coordinating care, managing chemoradiation-induced symptoms and side effects, and providing patient, family and staff education. She has worked in the University of Wisconsin System for over 25 years, the last five of which were in the Radiation Oncology Department. During her time as a radiation oncology nurse, Ms. Wiederholt co-founded "Heads Up," a head and neck cancer patient support group at the Carbone Cancer Center and now serves as the group's co-director. In January 2007 she served as a member of the steering committee for the first multidisciplinary head and neck cancer symposium sponsored by ASTRO, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Head and Neck Society. Ms. Wiederholt has also co-authored a cancer patient handbook titled, "The Write Track, a Personal Health Tracker for Cancer Patients." For the past two years, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-10-02T12:59:11-07:00October, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Spit proteins could lead to oral cancer test

Source: www.canada.com Author: Maggie Fox A simple screen of proteins in human saliva was able to accurately detect a common type of oral cancer, a finding that may lead to a painless new diagnostic test, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The test can predict the mouth cancer in 93 percent of cases, a team at the University of California Los Angeles reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. It is among the first of a new set of spit-based diagnostic tests expected to arise from a protein map of human saliva developed by researchers at UCLA and other centers. The map, published in March, identified all 1,116 unique proteins found in human saliva glands. The latest findings focus on oral squamous cell carcinoma, which affects more than 300,000 people worldwide. More than 90 percent of cancers that start in the mouth are squamous cell cancers, according to the American Cancer Society. Researchers at UCLA's School of Dentistry collected saliva samples from 64 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma and compared them with samples from 64 healthy patients. They found that five protein biomarkers -- M2BP, MRP14, CD59, profilin and catalase -- predicted oral cancer 93 percent of the time. "We have demonstrated a new approach for cancer biomarker discovery using saliva proteomics," said Shen Hu, who led the research. The UCLA team is developing devices to detect these markers that could be studied in human trials. "I believe a test measuring these biomarkers will come to a point of regular [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-10-02T07:04:32-07:00October, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Vitamin C may interfere with cancer treatment

Source: New York Times (nytimes.com) Author: Tara Parker-Pope Many people gobble big doses of vitamin C in hopes of boosting their immune system and warding off illness. But new research shows that in people with cancer, the vitamin may do more harm than good. Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York studied the effects of vitamin C on cancer cells. As it turns out, the vitamin seems to protect not just healthy cells, but cancer cells, too. The findings were published today in the journal Cancer Research. “The use of vitamin C supplements could have the potential to reduce the ability of patients to respond to therapy,” said Dr. Mark Heaney, an associate attending physician at the cancer center. Dr. Heaney and his colleagues tested five different chemotherapy drugs on cancer cells in the laboratory. Some of the cells were first treated with vitamin C. In every case, including a test of the powerful new cancer drug Gleevec, chemotherapy did not work as well if cells had been exposed to vitamin C. The chemotherapy agents killed 30 to 70 percent fewer cancer cells when the cells were treated with the vitamin. A second set of experiments implanted cancer cells in mice. They found that the tumors grew more rapidly in mice that were given cancer cells pretreated with vitamin C. The researchers found that just like healthy cells, cancer cells also benefit from vitamin C. The vitamin appeared to repair a cancer cell’s damaged mitochondria, the energy center [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-10-01T07:50:57-07:00October, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Eating walnuts slows cancer growth, laboratory study finds

Source: news.biocompare.com Author: staff Snack-sized quantities of walnuts slow cancer growth in mice, reports a Marshall University pilot study published in the current issue of the peer-reviewed journal Nutrition and Cancer. Researcher W. Elaine Hardman, Ph.D., of Marshall's Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine said the study was designed to determine whether mice that got part of their calories by eating walnuts had slower breast cancer growth than a group eating a diet more typical of the American diet. "When we fed the mice the walnuts, the growth rate of the tumors they had was dramatically suppressed," Hardman said. The mice ate a diet in which 18.5 percent of the daily calories -- the equivalent of two servings for humans -- came from walnuts. Tumors in the walnut-fed group took twice as long to double in size as tumors in the control group, the article reports. The study is believed to be the first to look at the impact of walnut consumption on cancer growth. "It's always very good to find something that will slow the growth of tumors without being toxic chemotherapy," said Hardman, who has spent 15 years studying the role of diet in cancer. Walnuts have at least three components that could account for their cancer-slowing effect, Hardman said. They are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to slow cancer growth. They also include antioxidants and components called phytosterols, both of which have shown cancer-slowing effects in other studies. While the pilot study was [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-09-30T06:59:48-07:00September, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

New findings show cancer prevention effects of black raspberries, blueberries, olive leaves and green tea

Source: www.naturalnews.com Author: David Gutierrez Three studies presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's Sixth Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research in Philadelphia have demonstrated the powerful cancer-fighting benefits of dark berries, green tea and olive leaves, and suggest that gels and beverages may some day be used to prevent against cancer and tumor growth. In the first study, researchers from Ohio State University discovered that a gel based on freeze-dried black raspberries helps prevent precancerous mouth tumors (lesions) from becoming malignant. "This gel appears to be a valid means of delivering anthocyanins and other cancer-preventing compounds directly to precancerous cells, since it slowed or reduced lesion progression in about two-thirds of study participants," said researcher Susan Mallery. According to the American Cancer Society, oral squamous cell carcinoma is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, causing 7,500 deaths each year in the United States. Because no chemopreventive agent or treatment method other than radical mouth surgery exists, even those who survive the cancer often emerge significantly disfigured. And even in many cases where tumors are fully removed, they still recur. "Oral cancer is a debilitating disease and there is a desperate need for early detection and management of precancerous lesions," said Mallery. Most mouth cancer begins as small, noncancerous lesions in the mouth that are difficult to detect. It was these lesions that were treated in the Ohio State University study. Researchers carried out the study on 20 participants who had identifiable precancerous mouth lesions [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-09-29T18:53:12-07:00September, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Knicks Prez Donnie Walsh had oral cancer surgery soon after draft

Source: www.pacersdigest.com Author: Peter Vecsey Donnie Walsh asked me not to make a big deal of this when I requested permission to break the news . . . so I won't . . . though, I'm sure we all agree, it is a big deal. Four days after last June's draft, the Knicks' president, 67, entered Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and went under the knife for one hour. An uncontrollable 50-year urge to smoke vanished along with the cancerous part of his tongue. "My doctor says he got it all," Walsh said. "Luckily, it was caught quickly before it could spread. Numerous pre- and post-op scans of his head and neck concurred it had been contained. Physically, Walsh is almost back to normal. His mouth remains a little numb and his speech only betrays him when a conversation becomes lengthy. "It's like I have marbles in my mouth. But you can't really tell there's something missing unless I stick out my tongue." "Spare me," I promptly replied, "I'll take your word for it. "Something tells me your French kissing days may be over." Consensual gallows humor between New Yorkers who've been friends for almost half their adult lives is not only expected but required. Anything to lighten his psychological load is licensed; Donnie's stare down with mortality admittedly shook him up like the grade-school nuns who habitually harped on the Hereafter. Two of Donnie's closest college buddies died in the past three years. Additionally, an inordinately large percentage of his [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-09-29T18:52:48-07:00September, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

Sanofi Pasteur MSD’s HPV vaccine Gardasil(R) wins Prix Galien award

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com Author: staff The two HPV vaccines currently licensed for use in the UK were jointly awarded the coveted Prix Galien Medal for Innovation at a ceremony held on Wednesday evening in the Palace of Westminster, House of Commons. "We are absolutely delighted at the recognition given to the world's leading HPV vaccine Gardasil® - this award reflects the work of many people, all around the world, involved in making the dream of a cancer vaccine a reality", said Dr Nicholas Kitchin, Medical Director, accepting the award on behalf of the Sanofi Pasteur MSD team. "Both companies have developed the technology of HPV vaccines down different paths," he continued, "we chose a quadrivalent vaccine strategy, targeting a broader range of HPV-related genital disease than cervical cancer alone, with the aim of delivering additional benefits for patients and healthcare systems." The joint award for the two HPV vaccines, developed by Sanofi Pasteur MSD and GSK, was presented by Andrew Lansley CBE MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Health. The distinguished panel of seven judges, chaired by Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, selected the HPV vaccines as the winners from seven innovative products that reached the final. Vaccines have won in four of the last five Prix Galien awards and the UK award for Gardasil® follows similar success in Prix Galien competitions in the USA and France. Current experience with the four-type HPV vaccine Thirty years after the discovery that human papillomavirus (HPV) can cause cervical cancer, 15 years after the start [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-09-29T18:53:38-07:00September, 2008|Oral Cancer News|

HPV increases men’s risk for oral cancer, prompts calls for vaccine: pathology expert Dr. Shashi Pawar on HPV health concerns for men

Source: www.prweb.com Author: press release HPV, the human papillomavirus, is well known for its role in causing cervical cancer in women - so much so, in fact, that the National Institutes of Health recommend all girls be vaccinated against the virus when they are 11 or 12, prior to becoming sexually active. However, recent research shows that women are not the only ones at risk for developing HPV-related cancers. Oral cancers caused by the virus are increasing rapidly in men, and researchers suggest HPV may soon overtake tobacco use as the leading cause of these cancers of the mouth, tongue, throat and tonsils. "The human papillomavirus is one of the most insidious and dangerous sexually transmitted diseases for women, as it has been linked to a vast majority of cervical cancers," explains Dr. Shashi Pawar, PhD, FACMG, Director of Genetics at Acupath Laboratories. "We are now seeing the effects of HPV infection in men, and the marked increase in oral cancer - coupled with the well-known increased risk for penile and anal cancers - suggests that both sexes face equally serious health consequences from this virus," Dr. Pawar notes. Cumulative research spurs call for men's vaccine A benchmark study that tracked more than 30 years of oral cancer data from the National Cancer Institute found that the rate of oral cancer caused by the HPV virus, rather than lifestyle habits such as smoking or chewing tobacco, has risen steadily since 1973 and is now about even with the incidence rate [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-05-08T19:03:42-07:00September, 2008|Oral Cancer News|