Oral Cancer News – Page 38 – The Oral Cancer Foundation News Archive

Study reveals low risk of COVID-19 infection among patients undergoing head and neck cancer surgery

Source: www.eurekalert.org Author: news release A recent international observational study provides important data on the safety of head and neck cancer surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The study is part of the COVIDSurg Collaborative, an initiative to describe surgical practices during the early period of the pandemic, when many hospitals had limited capacity and when it was unclear whether it was safer to delay or continue in-hospital cancer treatments. "The problems were particularly acute in head and neck cancer surgery because for many cases, cure is dependent on surgery, but there was great concern about spreading infection from aerosol-generating procedures in the airway," said corresponding author Richard J. Shaw, MD, FDS, FRCS, of The University of Liverpool Cancer Research Centre, in the U.K. Professor Shaw and his colleagues in the COVIDSurg Collaborative examined information on 1,137 patients with head and neck cancer undergoing potentially curative surgery in 26 countries. The most common sites were the oral cavity (38 percent) and the thyroid (21 percent). The death rate within 30 days after surgery was 1.2 percent, a rate that would be normally expected in this patient population, without a pandemic. Also, 29 (3 percent) patients tested positive for COVID-19 within 30 days of surgery; of these 13 (44.8 percent) developed severe respiratory complications and three (10.9 percent) died. According to Professor Shaw, clinicians now know that these risks can be minimized with precautions such as [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-12-21T21:32:31-07:00December, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Agusta University Speech Therapy program helps cancer patients with speech and swallowing problems

Source: www.augustachronicle.com Author: Jozsef Papp, Augusta Chronicle After getting surgery in April for cancer of the oral cavity, Lenny Schaeffer was having problems opening his mouth wide enough to eat anything larger than a grape. He went through the whole process: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. During that process, he lost his ability to open his mouth, and it even affected his speech. An oncologist and his radiation therapist informed him of a new program, speech therapy, at the Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University that could help him. “What the speech therapy program did is basically give me exercises to do to increase the flexibility that I have in my mouth,” he said. “It allows me to eat better, more kinds of food and also improve speech.” Dr. Sarah Smith, a speech pathologist at the Georgia Cancer Center, said the program is aimed at helping cancer patients like Schaeffer, patients who have cancer of the neck and mouth area and are suffering from exposure to radiation during their treatment. As a National Cancer Center Network Facility, the center was called to have a multidisciplinary approach to treating cancer, Smith said. Smith was moved to the cancer center in the summer, mainly to keep cancer patients from walking from the center to the hospital because of COVID-19. “Treating head and neck cancer is very different than treating other types of disabilities," she said. "When cancer patients come to the cancer center, we offer a variety of providers, right on site, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-12-20T20:37:18-07:00December, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

UK Innovators target nanoparticles at inoperable cancers

Source: www.politicshome.com Author: from Medicines Discovery Catapult At a point of critical clinical need for improved treatments for pancreatic and head and neck cancers, a partnership of healthcare innovators set out to revolutionise radiotherapy for inoperable, and the most difficult to treat tumours. With the aim of achieving a higher quality of life for those with unfavourable prognoses, this project, funded by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, brings together partners with a wealth of experience and specialist know-how in the areas of nanoparticle development, drug delivery and bioimaging. The pioneering work being conducted will target cancerous cells more selectively, enabling a reduced dose of radiation, which would lower the toxic effects a patient receives as a result. This targeted approach will employ Xerion Healthcare’s non-toxic radiosensitiser - this heightens the cells’ sensitivity to radiotherapy, increasing the likelihood of successful treatment while reducing the often devastating side effects. To ensure the nanoparticles carrying the therapeutic agent reaches deep inside the tumour, Active Needle Technology’s unique delivery system conveys the treatment to the cancerous cells with the assistance of ultrasonic vibrations, which not only allow accurate placement, but also enables an optimal distribution throughout the tumour and limits damage of healthy cells in the process. Medicines Discovery Catapult’s (MDC) advanced pre-clinical imaging suite and state-of-the-art expertise in complex medicines validation will undertake in-life imaging of the nanoparticle distribution, allowing the partners to validate its biodistribution in tumour and across other tissues and organs. Ian Quirk, CEO of Active Needle Technology said: [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-12-19T08:18:56-07:00December, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Addenbrooke’s to use Microsoft’s AI tool to speed up cancer treatment

Source: www.governmentcomputing.com Author: staff Microsoft said that Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, UK, will use its artificial intelligence (AI) technology powered InnerEye tool for speeding up cancer treatment. Developed at its Cambridge Research Lab, the InnerEye project helps in developing AI models that leverage the hospital’s own data to automatically show tumours and healthy organs on patient scans. These are then checked and confirmed by a clinical oncologist prior to giving treatment to the patient, said Microsoft. According to the tech major, the process will reduce the otherwise lengthy treatment planning stage, which is crucial for head and neck cancers, which can multiply quickly if left untreated. Microsoft claims that InnerEye can help execute contouring process in complex cases 13 times faster than the current approach. Addenbrooke’s Hospital oncologist and InnerEye co-lead Dr Raj Jena said: “The results from InnerEye are a game-changer. To be diagnosed with a tumour of any kind is an incredibly traumatic experience for patients. “So as clinicians we want to start radiotherapy promptly to improve survival rates and reduce anxiety. Using machine learning tools can save time for busy clinicians and help get our patients into treatment as quickly as possible.” Run by Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Addenbrooke’s is a teaching hospital, research centre, and also a designated academic health science centre. Addenbrooke’s Hospital and Microsoft are said to have been collaborating over the last eight years to develop and pilot InnerEye. The hospital will become the first NHS facility to have introduced a [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-12-12T10:01:59-07:00December, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

First patient participates in immunotherapy trial despite COVID-19 pandemic

Source: www.news-medical.net Author: UC-San Diego, Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc Since 2016, Bernard Thurman has undergone traditional treatments, experimental therapies and surgeries to counter the cancer within him, but nothing has successfully eradicated the disease. Earlier this year, the oncologists in Los Angeles who were treating him referred Thurman to a personalized cancer therapy trial being developed at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health. "Truly, I am running out of options, as far as treatment goes," said Thurman, whose cancer developed in his tonsils and has since spread to his lungs. "The latest immunotherapies, both the FDA-approved and the experimental, were proving ineffective. Obviously, it was time to go in a different direction." Thurman met with Ezra Cohen, MD, associate director for translational science at Moores Cancer Center, in mid-March to discuss an investigational cell therapy that uses a patient's own immune cells -- specifically tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) -- to seek and destroy their own unique cancer cells. Days after this meeting, COVID-19 swept the country, forcing hospitals to rethink which procedures could continue and which would need to be paused. Because the TIL trial requires that patients be hospitalized, it was put on hold. Thurman was disappointed. "Don't let the pandemic make you decide to put off cancer treatment," said Thurman. "You may or may not get COVID, but cancer will kill you if you don't treat it. So, don't delay it." Knowing the urgency of treatment, Cohen, a head and neck oncologist, suggested an alternative [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-12-12T09:56:17-07:00December, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Deep learning models for image-guided RT in head and neck and prostate cancers

Source: www.journalofclinicalpathways.com Author: Lisa Kuhns Machine learning models achieve clinically acceptable accuracy in image segmentation tasks in radiotherapy planning and reduce overall contouring time for head and neck and prostate cancers, according to a recent study in JAMA Network Open (2020;3[11]:e2027426. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.27426) Personalized radiotherapy planning requires large time commitments for oncologists and processes often vary among experts and institutions. Authors aimed to explore clinically acceptable autocontouring solutions that can be integrated into clinical practice and used in different radiotherapy areas. Researchers evaluated multicenter imaging data set made up of 519 pelvic and 242 head and neck computer tomography scans from 8 clinical sites. Patients in the study were diagnosed with either prostate or head and neck cancer. The models were trained to automatically delineate organs at risk and evaluated internal and external datasets. Models were compared against expert annotations in an interobserver variability (IOV) study. For 13 of the 15 structures, the models performed within the bounds of expert IOV. For internal vs external data sets, the models achieved mean [SD] Dice scores for left femur at 98.52% and 98.04% (P = .04), respectively. “In this study, the models achieved levels of clinical accuracy within expert IOV while reducing manual contouring time and performing consistently well across previously unseen heterogeneous data sets,” concluded the study authors. “With the availability of open-source libraries and reliable performance, this creates significant opportunities for the transformation of radiation treatment planning.”—Lisa Kuhns

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-12-11T09:20:35-07:00December, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Personalized vaccines: the new frontier in cancer treatment

Source: www.wildcat.arizona.edu Author: Udbhav Venkataraman Exciting results from a new clinical study showed that a personalized vaccine combined with an immunotherapy drug had a promising response rate in patients with advanced incurable head and neck cancer. Dr. Julie Bauman, chief of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine — Tucson, led a phase one clinical trial with the pharmaceutical company, Moderna, to test the combined use of personalized vaccines created from tumor DNA with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab. Of the 10 patients involved in the study, five of the them responded to the treatment, meaning 30% of the cancer mass had decreased. Furthermore, two of the patients completely responded, meaning that cancer could not be detected. Molly Cassidy is one of those two patients. What was initially determined to be a stress-related ear-ache turned out to be an aggressive case of squamous cell carcinoma, a form of head and neck cancer. Head and neck cancers impact the linings of the mouth and throat. Risk factors for this disease include alcohol consumption, smoking and other environmental carcinogens that we are all exposed to. It can also be caused by human papillomavirus (HPV). Cassidy did not fit this profile at all. “I’m HPV-negative. I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. I’m a woman. I was the first person in my family to have cancer. I was 35 when I got my diagnosis,” Cassidy said. “I was also in really good health … To hear that I had cancer was [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-12-09T06:51:37-07:00December, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

NHS to trial blood test that detects over 50 early-stage cancers

Source: www.sciencefocus.com Author: Sara Rigby, PA Science A blood test that may be able to spot more than 50 types of cancer will be piloted by the NHS, chief executive Sir Simon Stevens has announced. Developed by US-based company Grail, the test checks for molecular changes. The Galleri blood test, which can detect early stage cancers through a simple blood test, will be piloted with 165,000 patients in a deal struck by NHS England. NHS England said research on patients with signs of cancer suggests the test can identify many types that are difficult to diagnose early, such as head and neck, ovarian, pancreatic, oesophageal and some blood cancers. If the programme shows that the test also works as expected for people without symptoms, it will be rolled out to become routinely available. The test could help meet the NHS goal of increasing the proportion of cancers caught early, which can be the key to reducing cancer mortality. Patients who have their condition diagnosed at stage one – when the tumour is small and hasn’t spread – typically have between 5 and 10 times the chance of surviving compared with those found at stage four – when it has spread to at least one other organ. “While the good news is that cancer survival is now at a record high, over a thousand people every day are newly diagnosed with cancer,” said Stevens. “Early detection – particularly for hard-to-treat conditions like ovarian and pancreatic cancer – has the potential to [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-11-29T15:12:54-07:00November, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Thousands of Brits may be living with mouth cancer after ‘healthy’ dad dies aged 37

Source: www.mirror.co.uk Author: Alan Weston & Sam Truelove A dentist has warned that thousands of Brits may be unknowingly living with mouth cancer after a "healthy" dad-of-seven died from the disease. Alan Birch, 37, lived a healthy, active lifestyle and did not drink or smoke but died from an aggressive form of mouth cancer in April. The self-employed plasterer, from Wirral in Merseyside, was diagnosed with mouth cancer in 2018, and had to have 90 per cent of his tongue removed, Liverpool Echo reports. Despite Alan undergoing both radiotherapy and chemotherapy, the cancer returned each time and specialists told his devastated family there was nothing more they could do for him. Alan and his partner of 12 years, Debbie McDonough, decided to get married in February, but he tragically died a few weeks later in April. With the latest figures from the British Dental Association showing that 19 million treatments have been missed due to lockdown, dentists are now concerned about the number of cases of mouth cancer that will have potentially gone undiagnosed this year as a result. Mouth cancer takes more lives than cervical cancer and testicular cancer combined, with 8,722 new cases reported in the UK last year. This is a 58 per cent increase compared to a decade ago and a 97 per cent rise since 2000. Debbie said: "I would urge people to always keep on top of their dentist appointments as they are the ones who notice the warning signs for mouth and tongue [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-11-29T15:06:57-07:00November, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Why immunotherapy only works for some with head and neck cancer

Source: medicalxpress.com Author: Katie Pence, University of Cincinnati Image of a healthy T cell on left compared to a cancer T cell on right. Credit: Ameet Chimote University of Cincinnati researchers have discovered new clues into why some people with head and neck cancer respond to immunotherapy, while others don't. Findings published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer show that it could all come down to "channeling" the power and function within one particular type of immune cell. Laura Conforti, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the UC College of Medicine and corresponding author on the study, says understanding these mechanisms could help in creating combination treatments to more effectively treat some patients with cancer. She points out that head and neck cancers are the sixth most common cancers in the world, affecting about 53,000 Americans every year. To combat the deadly disease, doctors often turn to immunotherapy, which boosts the body's own immune system in an effort to identify and kill cancer cells. "Our immune cells are naturally programmed to distinguish between our body's 'normal' cells and what they see as 'foreign' cells and attack only the foreign cells," explains Conforti. She says the immune cells—called T cells— lead the body's attack against cancers but the impact of that attack can be proven futile if a molecule in cancer cells is able to bind to an immune checkpoint in the T cells and effectively "turn them off like a light switch." As a [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-11-25T13:38:19-07:00November, 2020|Oral Cancer News|