11/15/2005 England S. Scott & M. McGurk British Dental Journal (2005); 199, 585. doi: 10.1038 Research Letters: Sir, we read with interest the article by McLeod et al. on delays in the diagnosis of oral cancer. An assumption of the paper is that reducing diagnostic delays will reduce tumour stage at diagnosis. The current literature indicates there is no significant association between duration of diagnostic delay and stage of oral cancer at diagnosis, suggesting advanced stage disease is not always a consequence of delayed diagnosis (delay being defined as the period from the onset of symptoms to receipt of a definitive diagnosis). We have investigated this relationship in a consecutive cohort of patients (n = 250) presenting to Guy's Hospital Head and Neck Service, with squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity. Although just over half the cohort followed the logical delay-stage relationship (29% had no delay and early stage disease, while 24% had a long delay and had advanced stage disease), 27% paradoxically had no delay yet had advanced stage disease and 20% had a prolonged diagnostic delay yet had early stage disease. It is suggested the paradox is due to different rates of tumour growth. However the time durations involved are simply not long enough for a squamous cell carcinoma to develop from an early lesion into late stage disease. A more plausible explanation (but one which has received relatively little attention) is that some oral cancers may be silent (asymptomatic) until late in the disease period. Conversely, [...]

11/14/2005 United Kingdom staff LifeStyle Extra (www.lse.co.uk) An increasing number of young Brits are being killed by mouth cancer because of their unhealthy lifestyles, including smoking and binge drinking, research revealed today. Doctors are urging people of all ages to check their mouths more regularly in the fight against the number of mouth cancer deaths which can strike at any age. The most common causes of mouth cancer are smoking and binge drinking and people who do both are 30 times more likely to develop the condition. Bad eating habits are also a contributory factor in causing the disease. In the UK over 4,300 new cases of mouth cancer are diagnosed annually with around 1,700 people dying every year. Recent research shows that mouth cancer, once considered to be a condition that affected older men, has now become a more common worry for younger men and women. Dr Nigel Carter, chief executive of the British Dental Health Foundation, said: "In the UK, mouth cancer kills a person every five hours and is no longer just older men who need to be worried about developing mouth cancer - the condition can strike anyone. "Regular self-examination is now normal for breast cancer and testicular cancer, and it needs to be the same for mouth cancer. "The most common cause of mouth cancer are smoking and drinking alcolhol to excess. People who both are 30 times more susceptible. "Of course you can cut your risk considerably by leading a healthy lifestyle, so giving [...]

11/14/2005 staff CancerConsultants.com According to a recent article published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics, the agent Ethyol® (amifostine) protects against xerostomia (abnormally dry mouth) while not affecting long-term outcomes in patients with head and neck cancer who undergo radiation therapy. Approximately 40,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with head and neck cancer every year. Cancers of the head and neck include cancers of the nasal cavity, and sinuses, mouth, and throat. According to the American Cancer Society, 11,000 people died from head and neck cancer in 2004. Standard treatment for head and neck cancer is largely determined by the stage (extent to which the cancer has spread) and by the specific locations within the head or neck area where the cancer has spread. Radiation therapy and chemotherapy tend to be commonly used. Unfortunately, side effects caused by radiation therapy (ulcers, dry mouth, burning of the tissue at the site where radiation is aimed) are common. In addition to drastically reducing the quality of life of patients, these side effects often cause a delay or cancellation of administration of chemotherapy or additional radiation therapy. Postponing of missing just one dose of therapy may result in compromised outcomes, including a worsening of overall survival. Therefore, complete prevention of these side effects is crucial in providing optimal outcomes. Xerostomia refers to a condition of an abnormally dry mouth. Patients with severe xerostomia have very limited or virtually no saliva production. This results in difficulty eating, speaking, and [...]

11/13/2005 New York, NY staff CBS Sunday News (www.cbsnews.com) For many people with a terminal illness, their last hope may come from a drug that is not widely available; a drug in the testing phase by a pharmaceutical company yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The only way to get such a drug is through a government approved clinical trial. But now some patients, their families and doctors say that clinical trials in terminally ill patients may be killing more people than saving, reports CBS Sunday Morning medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay reports. Frank Burrough's daughter Abigail was diagnosed with head and neck cancer at age 18. She died three years later. He blames her death not only on her disease but the way modern medicine develops drugs. When asked if his daughter realized how ill she was, Burroughs says, "Absolutely. She knew fairly early on that she was in big trouble." But to Burroughs, it wasn't just neck and lung cancer that led to the death of his 21-year old daughter. He blames the way modern medicine develops drugs. Abigail was a very open minded, inclusive person, Senay reports. A gifted student, active in her community and at church, Abigail's life was in full swing. "She had lots of friends, honors in college. She was a very good student. She lived life to the fullest," Burroughs says. "She did all kinds of charity work." Then the cancer diagnosis. But as Abigail's condition worsened, two promising [...]

11/13/2005 London, England staff Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk) Smokers are worryingly unconcerned about the high risks they face from mouth cancer, research has revealed. While the dangers of lung cancer remain at the forefront of fears about tobacco, many remain unaware that smokers are six times more likely to develop mouth cancer than non-smokers. A survey has now found that nine out of 10 smokers (89 per cent) put concerns about mouth cancer as a low priority. Only 5 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds who smoke said they worried about mouth cancer - despite the fact that 90 per cent of people with mouth cancer are tobacco users. The research, by dental plan provider Denplan, came during Mouth Cancer Awareness Week, which runs until November 19. Charity Cancer Research UK is this week also to warn about the link between alcohol consumption and a rise in mouth cancer cases in the UK, with a new campaign to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms. Around 4,300 new cases of mouth cancer - also known as oral cancer - are diagnosed in the UK each year. The Denplan survey, of more than 2,200 people, found that both smokers and non-smokers were more likely to worry about other types of cancer than mouth cancer with only one in five (20 per cent) concerned about contracting the disease. But with half of people with mouth cancer dying from the disease, it has a higher proportion of deaths than breast, cervical and skin cancer. [...]

11/11/2005 Toronto, Ontario, Canada press release prnewswire.com Viventia Biotech Inc. today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated the Company's lead drug, Proxinium(TM), as a Fast Track Product for the treatment of patients with recurrent squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN). The Fast Track program facilitates the development and expedites the review of new therapeutics that are intended to treat serious or life threatening diseases and demonstrate the potential to address unmet medical needs. The Fast Track Program is intended to accelerate the filing of an NDA. The FDA will provide input into product development plans and may accept portions of the marketing application prior to the completion of the final registration package. Also most, but not all, drugs that are designated for the Fast Track Program are given priority review once the NDA is filed. The targeted date for drugs entitled to priority review is 6 months compared to the target of 10 months as set by the Food and Drug Modernization Act. "Recurrent, refractory head and neck cancer is a devastating and aggressive disease for which there are limited treatment options," said Dr. Nick Glover, President and CEO of Viventia. "We look forward to working with the FDA to further advance our clinical strategy for Proxinium(TM), which has shown promising early-stage efficacy results in patients with this form of cancer." About Proxinium(TM) Proxinium(TM) combines a powerful cytotoxic protein payload with the highly precise tumour-targeting characteristics of a monoclonal antibody. A single [...]

11/11/2005 New York, NY Megan Rauscher Yahoo News (news.yahoo.com) Smokeless oral tobacco products such as moist snuff and hard snuff lozenges are not a safe alternative to cigarettes for people trying to kick the habit, as these products contain high levels of cancer-causing compounds. Instead, the best aids appear to be medicinal nicotine replacement products such as the nicotine patch or gum as these products contain only trace amounts of cancer-causing compounds, according to research presented at a cancer prevention conference in Baltimore this month. Dr. Stephen Hecht and colleagues from the University of Minnesota Cancer Center in Minneapolis compared the levels of cancer-causing nitrosamines in popular smokeless tobacco products and medicinal nicotine products such as the nicotine patch, nicotine gum, and nicotine lozenges. The results "clearly showed that the levels of cancer-causing nitrosamines are far higher in smokeless tobacco products than they are in medicinal nicotine products," Hecht said during a press briefing. Nitrosamine levels were highest in oral snuff tobacco products made in the US, following by Swedish 'snus' (another type of smokeless tobacco), whereas the lowest levels were found in hard snuff lozenges. The snuff lozenges actually did "quite well in our study -- it does appear to have lower levels of carcinogenic nitrosamines" than most of the other smokeless tobacco products, Hecht said. By contrast, only trace amounts of these cancer-causing nitrosamines were found in the nicotine patch and gum. While smokeless tobacco has "demonstrably less carcinogens and toxins than cigarette smoke," said Hecht, smokeless tobacco [...]

11/10/2005 Birmingham, England Emma Brady Birmingham Post (icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk) It's hard to pick up, but Muriel Bishop is frightened. As the 78-year-old waits for the anaesthetist to arrive, she admits she is a little worried about her eight-hour operation at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Edgbaston. The retired book-keeper, from Wylde Green, is having surgery to remove her tongue which is being weighed down by a golfball-sized tumour. It is being replaced with a prosthetic tongue. Ulcers were first spotted on her tongue in 1984 which were later diagnosed as cancer and Mrs Bishop underwent a course of radiotherapy. But years of smoking had already left their legacy and the symptoms eventually returned, resulting in difficulty eating and drinking. "At the moment I can't swallow very well and I'm hoping that when this is over I shall be able to get back to normal," said Mrs Bishop. "I'd had a biopsy and then a few weeks ago I realised my tongue felt different, it was all ulcerated, so I went to see my consultant, Sat Parmar, and he recommended this procedure. "Obviously I'm scared but I've every faith in the doctors here, and I'm sure Mr Parmar will do a great job." Mrs Bishop's case is fairly advanced but the number of mouth and other oral cancers is rising. Linked to excessive drinking and smoking, health bosses are keen to raise public awareness about this form of cancer, which accounts for a sixth of all cancers in Britain. Mr Parmar, an oral [...]

11/8/2005 New York, NY Steven Reinberg Forbes (www.forbes.com) Aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may help prevent esophageal cancer from developing in patients with Barrett's esophagus, researchers report. Barrett's esophagus is a precancerous condition in which the esophagus changes so that some of its lining is replaced by tissue similar to that normally found in the intestine. People with Barrett's esophagus are 50 times more likely to develop a type of throat cancer called esophageal adenocarcinoma, the most rapidly increasing cancer in the United States. "We observed that people who had Barrett's esophagus who were taking aspirin and other NSAIDs were about a third less likely to go on to get esophageal cancer, compared with people who never took NSAIDs regularly," said study author Dr. Thomas L. Vaughan, head of the epidemiology program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Besides aspirin, the NSAID group of pain relievers include ibuprofen, naproxen and the Cox-2 painkillers Vioxx, Bextra and Celebrex -- of which only Celebrex remains on U.S. drugstore shelves. Reporting in the Nov. 7 online edition of The Lancet Oncology, Vaughan and his colleagues collected data on 350 people diagnosed with Barrett's esophagus. For more than five years, Vaughan's team looked at whether NSAID use correlated with the development of esophageal adenocarcinoma in these patients. They found that people taking NSAIDs were at a 68 percent lower risk of developing esophageal adenocarcinoma, compared with people who didn't use the drugs. Among people who had taken NSAIDs in the [...]

11/8/2005 Austin, TX staff MedGadget (medgadget.com) Introgen Therapeutics has announced an alliance with Colgate-Palmolive to develop and potentially market oral health care products. The terms of the alliance call for the development of specialized formulations of Introgen's molecular therapies targeted at pre-cancerous conditions of the oral cavity and oral cancer. According to the press release, the research and development activities in the alliance will be conducted by Introgen and will focus on oral formulations of Introgen's molecular therapeutics employing tumor suppressor genes such as p53, mda-7, and FUS1. Introgen has already conducted a phase 1 clinical study using INGN 234, a mouthwash formulation delivering the p53 tumor suppressor for oral cancer prevention in patients diagnosed with leukoplakia, a pre-cancerous condition that can lead to oral cancer. Leukoplakia has an incidence of approximately 3 percent of the adult population. "We are enthusiastic about the opportunity to apply Introgen's molecular agents to develop oral care products with Colgate-Palmolive," stated David G. Nance, Chief Executive Officer of Introgen. "We believe future commercial applications of therapeutic genes will include topical formulations such as those developed for oral use under the alliance with Colgate. The tissues lining the oral cavity may be particularly well suited and accessible targets for molecular therapies that can arrest abnormal cell growth without harming normal cells. We believe that repair of damaged cells and safe elimination of malignant or pre-malignant cells from the mouth could represent important therapies for dentists, oral health professionals and oncology specialists to prevent and treat [...]