chemotherapy – Page 11 – Oral Cancer News

Researchers find overactive protein among mouth cancer patients

Source: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ Author: B.S. Akshaya An overactive protein in mouth cancer encourages tumours to grow fast and scientists claim that the protein will help them to find an effective treatment for the disease. Cancer Research UK scientists have discovered FRMD4A, a protein that is overactive among mouth cancer patients. They claim that just deactivating the protein will help save many lives. A study conducted on mice revealed that when FRMD4A protein is turned on, it helps the cancer cells to group and stick together, but when the protein is deactivated the stickiness of the cell is lost and ultimately it causes cancer cells to die. Scientists have already found some potential drugs that could help them deactivate the protein. “What’s really exciting about this research is that we already have potential drugs that can be used to target this protein or compensate for the effects that it is having,” said Dr Stephen Goldie, researcher at Cancer Research UK, in a statement. “These drugs could offer new options to patients where surgery and chemotherapy have not worked or could be used alongside them. We now need to start trials with these treatments, but we hope this could make a real difference to people with mouth cancer in the future,” he added. Mouth cancer starts anywhere in the oral cavity area like in the cheek lining area, the floor of the mouth, gums or the roof of the mouth (palate). Symptoms of this cancer are chewing problems, mouth sores, speech difficulty, swallowing [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-07-19T07:41:38-07:00July, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

IMRT plus chemotherapy offers high locoregional control in advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Source: www.healio.com Treatment with intensity-modulated radiotherapy and concurrent weekly chemotherapy improved xerostomia and dysphagia in patients with advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma, according to study results presented at the WIN Symposium. Researchers in China recruited 310 patients with stages III to IVb nasopharyngeal carcinoma. All patients received curative IMRT plus weekly chemotherapy with cisplatin (40 mg/m2). Patients received doses of 66 to 70.4 Gy to the gross tumor volume, 60 Gy to the first clinical target, and 54 to 56 Gy to the second clinical target. “The medial group retropharyngeal nodes were never contoured as clinical target volume, aiming to spare the pharyngeal constrictors unless they were involved,” the researchers wrote. “[The] level 1b node was selectively contoured as clinical target volume in order to spare the submandibular glands and oral cavity.” Patient-reported and observer-related scores assessed swallowing and salivary gland function at baseline and periodically up to 3 years after treatment. Median follow-up was 39 months. At 3 years, researchers reported a local RFS rate of 93.6%, a regional RFS rate of 95.8% and a distant metastases-free survival rate of 80%. Researchers reported no marginal or out-of-field relapses. Patients’ dysphagia and xerostomia worsened during late courses of treatment, as well as after treatment, yet scores gradually improved after therapy. Dysphagia was minimal or absent at 9 months post radiotherapy, whereas xerostomia improved from 3 to 15 months post radiotherapy and remained steadily until the conclusion of follow-up. “IMRT concurrent with weekly chemotherapy aiming to reduce xerostomia and dysphagia can be safely [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-07-19T07:42:19-07:00July, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

The New Face of Oral Cancer

Source: nursing.advanceweb.comBy Jonathan BassettPosted on: April 22, 2013 For decades tobacco was the primary cause of oral cancer but a more insidious culprit has emerged. Jerry Wilck had no reason to suspect anything. Why would he? He only smoked for a couple of years and gave it up more than 40 years ago. He didn't drink excessively, didn't have a family history of cancer, and took good care of himself. In fact, maybe the only reason the 59-year-old consulted an oral surgeon about the small sore on his tongue - the result of a habit of running this particular spot along his teeth - was that there happened to be such a specialist right there in his office. Wilck was a general practice dentist in Langhorne, Pa., and particularly attuned to anomalies of the soft tissues of the mouth. His oral surgeon took no chances and ordered a biopsy. Wilck was "floored" the night in March 2005 when the lab report arrived by fax from the oral pathology department at Temple University in Philadelphia - squamous cell carcinoma. Wilck immediately consulted with John Ridge, MD, PhD, FACS, chief of head and neck surgery at Temple's Fox Chase Cancer Center. After surgical removal of part of his tongue and lymph nodes from his neck, along with a round of physical and speech therapy, Wilck is now cancer free and has full use of his jaw, throat and voice. "I was lucky," confessed Wilck, who retired from practice in 2009 and now spends a [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-06-10T12:26:21-07:00June, 2013|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|

Researchers Investigate A Less Toxic Radiation Treatment For HPV-Positive Oropharynx Cancer

Source : BiocomparePosted: June 03, 2013 CHICAGO, IL (May 29, 2013)—Researchers from Fox Chase Cancer Center and other institutions have completed a phase II clinical trial that may help identify those patients with HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer who do not require the full radiation dose given in a standard regimen of Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT). Preliminary findings will be presented by Shanthi Marur, first author on the study and an oncologist at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, at the 49th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology on Sunday, June 2. Patients enrolled in the trial received an initial regimen of chemotherapy followed by treatment with the targeted therapy cetuximab, a monoclonal antibody. In the study, a patient's response to those initial treatments determined the dose during radiation treatment. “Those patients who had a really good response to chemotherapy might also be more responsive to radiation,” says Barbara Burtness, senior author on the study and chief of head and neck medical oncology at Fox Chase. “Therefore, the use of a full dose of radiation for those patients might represent overtreatment.” Burtness is also chair of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), which sponsors this ongoing trial. ECOG is a a National Cancer Institute-funded team of researchers who organize and carry out clinical trials. According to the National Cancer Institute, more than 40,000 people will be diagnosed with cancer of the oropharynx—a swath of tissue at the back of the throat—in 2013, and nearly 8,000 will die [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-06-04T11:49:00-07:00June, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Researchers discover potential biomarkers to identify patients with head and neck cancer

Published on June 1, 2013 at 4:16 AMSource: news-medical.net Researchers from Fox Chase Cancer Center will present data at the 49th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology on Saturday, June 1, which shows the discovery of potential biomarkers that may be used to identify patients with head and neck cancer whose tumors are unlikely to respond to treatment by the targeted therapy cetuximab-a type of monoclonal antibody. The FDA approved the drug, in combination with radiation or as a second-line drug after chemotherapy had failed, in 2006. In 2011, the drug was approved as a first-line treatment for metastatic disease, in combination with chemotherapy. "Targeted therapies should optimally be used in patients who are selected for sensitivity or the absence of sensitivity, and we've been handicapped by not knowing the resistance in head and neck cancers," says Barbara Burtness, MD, chief of head and neck medical oncology at Fox Chase and chair of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), a National Cancer Institute-funded team of researchers who organize and carry out clinical trials. Before cetuximab, head and neck cancer patients' only options were conventional platinum-based chemotherapy and radiation, says Burtness. But since tumors in different people may have different biologies, not all patients respond to same treatment in the same ways. Those whose tumors do not respond to cetuximab suffer the drug's side effects without gaining benefits. Biomarkers can help providers match appropriate treatments to disease. They may also provide inroads toward re-sensitizing tumors to treatment by [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-06-03T10:31:21-07:00June, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Michael Douglas: It took doctors nine months to figure out walnut-sized tumor at the back of my tongue was throat cancer

Source: www.nydailynews.com Author: Corky Siemaszko Michael Douglas said the tumor at the back of his tongue was the size of a walnut, but it still took doctors nine months to figure out it was throat cancer. “I knew something was wrong,” he said. “My tooth was really sore, and I thought I had an infection.” But the ear-nose-and-throat doctors and periodontists he consulted kept giving him antibiotics. “And then more antibiotics, but I still had pain,” he said. Finally, in 2010, a doctor in Montreal figured out that thing on his tongue was tumor. “Two days later, after the biopsy, the doctor called and said I had to come in,” Douglas recalled in a wide-ranging interview with New York magazine. “He told it me it was stage-four cancer. I said, ‘Stage four. Jesus.’ “And that was that. After complaining for nine months and them not finding anything, and then they told me I was stage four? That was a big day.” Douglas not only talked about his brush with mortality, he also chatted about his Hollywood comeback. He plays flamboyant piano tickler Liberace in an HBO biopic, “Behind the Candelabra,” that airs May 26. “Liberace loved sex,” he said. But the “Wall Street” star’s revelation that he had cancer sent a scare through Hollywood, where the words “stage four” were looked at as a death sentence. And for a time, Douglas looked like hell — losing 45 pounds as he subsisted on mostly on matzo ball soup as he healed. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2013-05-14T08:31:53-07:00May, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Spike in oral cancers puzzles experts

Source: www.turnto23.com Author: Victoria Colliver/San Francisco Chronicle Christine Schulz has never visited England, but she speaks with the clipped inflection of a vaguely British accent. It's not an affectation but, rather, the mystifying after-effect of an 18-hour surgery she endured in 2009 to remove about half her tongue due to a cancerous growth that had spread to her lymph nodes. Surgeons used skin from her wrist and upper leg to re-create the missing portions of her tongue. Through long term speech therapy, Schulz, 47, of Hollister, Calif., re-learned how to eat and talk with her reconstructed tongue. If she sounds as if she's from a different country, Schulz isn't complaining. "At the moment I woke up from surgery, I realized exactly what a huge deal it was," she said, describing how she had an incision in her throat to allow her to breathe and was prohibited to speak in her earliest days of healing. Oral cancers, which include those of the mouth and tongue, are most common in men over 60 with a long history of smoking or chewing tobacco, often combined with heavy drinking. But in recent years, a spike in the incidence of oral cancers is being attributed to human papilloma virus or HPV. But Schulz's cancer was neither HPV-- nor tobacco-related. That puts her in a camp of fewer than 7 percent of all oral cancers that have no identifiable cause, according to the Oral Cancer Foundation, an advocacy group based in Newport Beach, Calif. "Surprisingly, a [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2013-03-23T10:17:08-07:00March, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Are combination therapies effective for advanced SCCHN?

Source: Author: DrBicuspid Staff In a recent study, researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center examined whether the addition of multiple drugs to radiation therapy is superior to the current standard of care therapy with one drug and radiation for locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN). Their data, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, suggests that it does not (March 4, 2013). Standard therapy for SCCHN is a combination of the drug cisplatin and radiotherapy. This clinical trial compared this combination to the combination with the addition of a small-molecule inhibitor of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) erlotinib. For the study, 204 patients with locally advanced SCCHN were recruited between December 2006 and October 2011. Participants were assigned to receive either cisplatin and radiotherapy or the same chemoradiotherapy with erlotinab. EGFR is a therapeutic target for this type of cancer, and at least one other EGFR is approved for multiple uses in treating head and neck cancer, including in combination with radiation. To date, no data have been published on the use of EGFR inhibitors in combination with chemotherapy and radiation. The goal of the current study was to determine if adding EGRF inhibition improved efficacy when combined with standard of care radiation. Unfortunately, the researchers found that the addition of EGRF did not improve clinical response rate or progression-free survival. "There has been great enthusiasm and some confusion about the combinations of chemotherapy and biologic therapy such [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2013-03-12T07:00:53-07:00March, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Kentucky cancer center emphasizes patients’ quality of life

Source: www.drbicuspid.com Author: Donna Domino, Features Editor The James Graham Brown Cancer Center at the University of Louisville is among a growing number of facilities working to improve care for head and neck cancer (HNC) patients through collaborative care programs that bring together a spectrum of oncology specialists. The center provides multidisciplinary treatment for HNC patients using novel techniques that decrease the debilitating side effects of radiation and chemotherapy. The clinic also conducts research and clinical trials with targeted therapies that aim to restore patients' oral functions. Kentucky has a higher rate of HNC than the U.S. average, which provides a large patient pool for the many clinical trials that the center conducts, according to Zafrulla Khan, DDS, MS, professor and director of maxillofacial/oncologic dentistry in the center's HNC clinic. "That's what happens when you mix tobacco and bourbon," Dr. Khan noted. Intraoral radiation shields Some of the center's novel treatment techniques involve using intraoral radiation shields during brachytherapy radiotherapy procedures to prevent the tongue and nearby oral areas from getting irradiated while minimizing mucositis and xerostomia, Dr. Khan explained. Intraoral radiation shields prevent the tongue and nearby oral areas from getting irradiated while minimizing mucositis and xerostomia "We put catheters right into tumors so they can deliver the radiotherapy in the mouth with high-density therapy machines rather than doing an external beam," he said. The clinic also uses a surgical obturator, a prosthetic device that enables patients to speak and swallow following surgery for maxillary sinus cancer. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2013-02-20T07:32:57-07:00February, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

‘Dentist should have spotted my cancer’

Source: menmedia.co.uk Author: staff An NHS dentist who advised a patient to treat what turned out to be a life-threatening oral cancer with mouthwash is being sued for tens of thousands of pounds in damages. Paula Drabble, 58, went to Pinfold Dental Practice, in Hattersley, Hyde, in June 2008 with concerns about a white lesion on her gum. She was told by her dentist, Ian Hughes, it was nothing serious, a court heard. Mrs Drabble of Mottram Moor, Mottram, Hyde, had five further appointments with Mr Hughes and was advised to ‘manage’ her complaint with mouthwash. She was eventually referred to hospital in April 2009, and ‘seriously invasive cancer’ diagnosed. She had surgery, including removal of affected bone, followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy. She has now made a good recovery and has begun a High Court fight for damages, claiming Mr Hughes was negligent to have not spotted the cancer and referred her to hospital earlier. Timothy Briden, for Mrs Drabble, told the court his client had developed the patch on her gum some years earlier. The lesion was found to be benign by medics at the University Dental Hospital in Manchester and she was discharged in 2004 with a letter being sent to Mr Hughes, warning him to ‘re-refer if you notice or indeed Mrs Drabble notices any changes’. Marcus Dignum, for Mr Hughes, denied that his client was at fault in failing to spot the cancer. He said: “Plainly the court will have every sympathy with Mrs Drabble [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2013-01-21T06:56:22-07:00January, 2013|Oral Cancer News|