11/21/2007 Newport Beach, CA press release prnewsire.com The Oral Cancer Foundation announced today that three researchers working in areas of early oral cancer detection would be the foundation's first grant recipients. The grants, which were made as an ongoing commitment to each researcher, were awarded to Dr. Maura Gillison of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Dr. David Wong of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Dr. Ann Gillenwater of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. "We are supporting research that moves our early discovery agenda forward," the foundation's executive director Brian Hill said. "Early detection is our first front in reducing the death rate from oral cancer, and we believe these research programs all will have a huge impact on how and when people are diagnosed with the disease. Early detection and staging is directly correlated to better long-term outcomes for patients." The disease affects more than 34,000 Americans each year, and more than 8,000 will die from it annually. At the present time two-thirds of cases are caught in the cancer's later stages when prognosis is poor. At 5 years from diagnosis survival for all stages combined is approximately 50%. While other cancers have seen a decline in incidence and death, occurrence of oral and oropharyngeal cancers have increased in recent years, 11% in 2007 alone. "Public awareness of the disease is low, and screening models used incorrectly or inconsistently are largely to blame for the high death rate," Hill said. "We could be doing [...]

11/30/2007 Newport Beach, CA press release Compendium (www.compendiumlive.com) Two time Emmy nominated actress Colleen Zenk Pinter, best known for her long running role as Barbara Ryan on CBS's As the World Turns, has teamed up with the Oral Cancer Foundation to share the story of her battle against oral cancer, and raise public awareness of a disease which kills more Americans each year than more commonly known cancers. Zenk Pinter's first stop was CBS's The Early Show. In an interview with co-anchor Hannah Storm, Zenk Pinter revealed how a seemingly stubborn canker sore turned out to be a stage-two malignant oral cancer, requiring several surgeries to reconstruct her tongue, and months of radiation treatments. Zenk Pinter explained to Storm that she believes that her cancer was caused by the human papillomavirus. "I had absolutely none of the historic risk factors for this cancer, I never used tobacco and only drank socially," she said, referring to the two other common causes of the disease. "In fact, young Americans who have none of the historic risk factors are the fastest growing segment of oral cancer patients in the country," Brian Hill, executive director of the Oral Cancer Foundation says, "and we believe the culprit behind the surge in cases is HPV16, the same virus that causes cervical cancer." Dr. Mark Lingen, Professor of Pathology at the University of Chicago School of Medicine says, "Colleen was very typical of most Americans in their lack of knowledge of oral cancer. Awareness and routine screening [...]

11/20/2007 web-based arfticle staff www.medicalnewstoday.com Researchers from Loyola University Medical Center have recently reported on the safety and efficacy of two treatment options commonly recommended to patients with early larynx cancer. The largest and only study of its kind examined a total of 3898 patients from a NCI sponsored national database who underwent either surgery or radiation. The lead investigator, Dr. Gopal Sachdeva concluded that long term cure rates were equivalent with both of these options. In addition, there was no increased risk of second cancers among patients who received radiation compared to the surgical control. More importantly, surgical management of these patients resulted in a long term statistically significant increased risk of developing a second laryngeal cancer which radiation appears to protect against. This, according to Dr. Sachdeva, "can be explained by a concept called 'field cancerization.'" "Whatever the etiological factor, cigarette smoking or alcohol, genetic changes can occur in different areas of the aerodigestive resulting in precancerous and cancerous changes." According to Dr. Sachdeva, "In the case of larynx cancer, radiation treats a larger area, essentially the entire voice box. Surgery however usually just addresses the site of the tumor." "Thus," Dr. Sachdeva concludes, "radiation likely eliminates microscopic areas of precancerous changes in the field that if left untreated can progress to new second cancers - a new concept he has coined as 'field sterilization'" The authors concluded that because of equivalent long term survival, when deciding on a treatment for patients with early laryngeal cancer these finding [...]

11/19/2007 London, England staff www.dentistry.co.uk The winners of the first annual Mouth Cancer Voice Awards have been announced following a live performance in London. Kirsty Nichol, 17, from Hampshire won the performance for the Best Singer and James Quaife, 22 from London won the performance for the Best Comedian in front of a star-studded audience at the Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre. The Mouth Cancer Voice Awards is the idea of the Mouth Cancer Foundation, and is aimed at young people and students, encouraging them not to take their voices for granted. Every three hours someone will die from mouth cancer. The cancer can occur in any part of the mouth, tongue, lips, throat, salivary glands, pharynx, larynx, sinus, and other sites located in the head and neck area. In its very early stages, mouth cancer can be almost invisible making it easy to ignore. The Voice Awards celebrated the most talented, brightest young singing and comedy stars in the country. Students entered into two categories – singers and comedians – and were then voted for by the public. Twelve finalists performed live at the Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre in front of a live studio audience and a celebrity-packed panel of judges. The standard in the singing competition was extremely high. Kirsty, from Farnborough, said: ‘My ambition for the future is to become a singer. I am absolutely ecstatic that I won'. Kirsty has won a day's studio recording to record one song, courtesy of Insomnia Music Ltd. James won a 10-minute spot, [...]

11/19/2007 Swarthmore, PA Dougal Sutherland The Daily Gazette (www.sccs.swarthmore.edu) Ron Krall, a senior vice president in worldwide development at GlaxoSmithKline, spoke Friday about pharmaceutical ethics, particularly giving patients access to experimental medication outside of clinical trials. Krall, who was a math major in the class of 1969, did not use a traditional lecture format; instead, he led a discussion, even putting his personal email up on the board for "those of you who aren't satisfied" by the necessarily brief discussion. The lecture was based on a case study, in which a father requests an experimental medication for his 21-year-old daughter Amanda, who has terminal head-and-neck cancer. The medicine is currently in testing for lung cancer treatments; it seems likely, however, that it would work well for head-and-neck cancer. The drug works by suppressing epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFRs), which present in both lung cancer and head-and-neck cancer. It would seem only natural to give Amanda the drug: if it did something bad to her, so what? She was going to die soon anyway. Indeed, when polled before the discussion most of the students were relatively sure that Amanda should be given the drug. On the other hand, if something bad did happen, then it would almost certainly interfere with the approval process for the drug, which — if all goes well — would otherwise be available to regular patients within about three years. Even if the treatment works well, though, word will spread about how this medicine helped Amanda; other [...]

11/15/2007 Boston, MA Stephen Smith Boston.com Six years ago, Ronaldo Martinez and his wrenching plea to stop smoking - rendered in a tinny, robotic voice that is the legacy of throat cancer - vanished from the Massachusetts airwaves, a victim of politics and economics. Now, that landmark advertisement and a series of other commercials are being reprised, set to start airing again today on broadcast and cable channels, the most tangible evidence of a reinvigorated state antismoking campaign. There will be newly produced ads, too, with the same purpose: reducing tobacco use in Massachusetts. During the five years the ads ran previously, the percentage of adults who smoked dropped from 22.7 to 19.5. After the ads disappeared, the rate of decline slowed, and cigarette sales actually rose in 2006. State public health authorities unveiled the antismoking campaign yesterday, promising to spend about $1.5 million to run the ads for five months on television stations in Boston, Springfield, and Southeastern Massachusetts and to plaster the ads on the Internet and at transit stops. State authorities and the former smokers featured in the commercials pledged that the effort would restore the state's status as a world leader in tobacco control. "I felt so bad about it when the ads were taken off, but I had no control over it," Martinez, 54, said in an interview. "When they contacted me and they told me the campaign was coming back, I felt great." The Legislature and Governor Deval Patrick increased antismoking spending by $4.5 [...]

11/15/2007 London, England staff The Press Association (ukpress.google.com) Dental experts have called for more research into mouth cancer, which is killing as many people today as it did 30 years ago. Treatments for mouth cancer have also remained unchanged for the past three decades. Meanwhile, over the same period of time, the number of overall cancer deaths in the UK fell by 15%. Professor Saman Warnakulasuriya, chair in oral medicine at King's College London, said: "The failure to improve mouth cancer death rates over the last 30 years reflects the fact that people with the condition often don't visit the dentist until it is too late. "We need research into why this is and we also need clinical trials to find new generation anti-cancer medicines to combat the disease." He was addressing an audience of politicians, patients and leading experts at the launch of the Mouth Cancer Awareness Campaign at the House of Commons. Each year in the UK more than 4,750 cases of mouth cancer are diagnosed and the disease causes more than 1,700 deaths. However results from a British Dental Health Foundation survey show that only one in four people in the UK have heard of mouth cancer. Even fewer recognise the key risk factors such as smoking and alcohol. Dr Nigel Carter, the Foundation's chief executive, said: "Our survey proves that awareness of this condition is dangerously low. "Smoking is the most common cause of mouth cancer, but alcohol is almost as dangerous and the two together [...]

11/15/2007 Los Angeles, CA Veronica Jauriqui USC Public Relations (www.usc.edu) In the first epidemiologic study of oral cancer in ethnic subpopulations in California, two researchers from the USC School of Dentistry and one from the Keck School of Medicine of USC have identified a strong relationship between the incidence of oral cancer and race and ethnicity. Satish Kumar and Parish Sedghizadeh, clinical professors in the School of Dentistry’s Division of Diagnostic Sciences, along with Lihua Liu from the Keck School’s Department of Preventive Medicine, gleaned through 20 years of records from the California Cancer Registry – the state’s cancer surveillance database – for the incidence rates of invasive squamous cell carcinoma, the most common form of oral cancer. The good news about oral cancer: It has been on the decline for the past two decades. But the researchers discovered that different ethnic groups in California manifest the disease very differently. African-Americans and Caucasians, who have the highest oral cancer rates, are most likely to develop cancer of the tongue. Among Asian populations, Koreans had the highest incidence of tongue cancer, while Southeast Asians were more likely to develop the disease in the buccal mucosa, or inner cheek. Filipino women have the highest incidence of cancer of the palate. The research team theorized that cultural habits are to blame. Their findings will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology, Oral Radiology and Endodontology and are currently available online at www.ooooe.net Up to two-thirds [...]

11/15/2007 San Francisco, CA Rishi Sawhney, M.D. insideBayArea.com The introduction of "smart" laser targeted bombs and guided missiles with pinpoint accuracy have revolutionized modern warfare. A similar revolution is sweeping the world of cancer care. Targeted and smart anticancer drugs are increasingly being used in the treatment of a wide variety of cancers. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of scientists, clinicians, the pharmaceutical industry and the government, more of these modern therapies are available in your oncologist's office today. Simplistically speaking, cancer results when a single cell continues to divide and produces more cells in an unregulated fashion. Understanding this basic fact led to the development of the first generation of anti-cancer drugs, which attack all actively dividing cells. These drugs known as cytotoxic chemotherapy have been the mainstay of most medical oncology practices. They are effective, but are also associated with toxicities of hair loss, mouth sores, nausea, vomiting and bone marrow suppression as they affect all actively dividing cells. Increasing understanding of the biology and molecular profile of cancer cells has led to the realization that the regulation of certain cell surface molecules, genes and proteins is vital for the development of certain cancers. Through these changes, cancer cells are able to escape death, divide faster, spread to other parts of the body and can even recruit their own blood supply. Identification of some of these cell surface receptors, genes and proteins has provided the basis for the development of drugs against such targets. These drugs seek out [...]

11/14/2007 web-based article staff ScienceDaily.com The GPRC5A gene, which is under-expressed in human lung cancer cells, suppresses lung tumors in mouse models and could provide a key to attacking lung cancer in humans, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the Nov. 21 edition of The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The study found that mice with both of their GPRC5A genes suppressed developed normally until their second year of life, when 76 percent developed precancerous lesions called adenomas in their lungs and another 17 percent developed malignancies called adenocarcinomas. Only 10 percent of mice with both GPRC5A genes intact developed adenomas, and only 11 percent with one working version of the gene. None of the mice in the latter two groups developed lung cancer. "In humans, lung adenocarcinomas are the most common type of lung cancer and the major cause of death from this disease," says senior author Reuben Lotan, Ph.D., professor in M. D. Anderson's Department of Thoracic/ Head and Neck Medical Oncology. "Further study substantiating the role of the GPRC5A gene in human lung cancer could lead to the development of novel approaches for lung cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment." Lung cancer is the leading cause of deaths by cancer, killing 160,000 Americans annually. Lotan and colleagues earlier had shown that Gprc5a protein is detected in the lungs more than in any other tissue and that it is underexpressed in human non-small cell lung cancer and in head and neck [...]