Dear Oral Cancer & Diagnostics Insider,
With growing worldwide rates of oropharyngeal (OP) cancer, researchers have been searching for ways to detect and treat the disease, which kills about 8,000 of the 43,000 Americans who are diagnosed with it annually, according to the Oral Cancer Foundation. Now, researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that vaccines currently available for the human papillomavirus (HPV) could prevent most OP cancers.
Click here to read about their study into which HPV types are most associated with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma and who is most likely to get the disease.
In a related story in the Oral Cancer & Diagnostics Community, researchers have discovered a new cancer panel to find previously undetected HPV sequences and cancer mutations in oropharyngeal and laryngeal cancer using next-generation sequencing. Read about the findings, which were presented at the recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago.
And a new immunotherapy treatment has proved effective in some patients with advanced head and neck cancer. Click here to read about the drug, which was also discussed at the ASCO meeting.
Meanwhile, what if a treatment could kill only cancer cells and leave the surrounding organs alone? A novel combination of existing clinical treatments might be able to do just that, according to a new study in Nature Medicine. Click here for details.
Also, Korean researchers say an investigational drug shows promise as a treatment for patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, which typically has a very poor prognosis. Read about clinical trials of the drug, which blocks the activity of a protein called epidermal growth factor receptor.
In a related story, U.S. researchers compared proton beam therapy and intensity-modulated radiation therapy to see which provides better disease-free survival and tumor control for patients with head and neck cancer. Click here to read about their literature review, published recently in Lancet Oncology.
And Missouri researchers have found a pattern of gene expression associated with aggressive tumors that could produce a diagnostic test that could alter the clinical management of oral cancer patients. Click here to read about their study of mouth cancer in mice that was outlined in a recent issue of Clinical Cancer Research.
Also, the recent detection of microRNA (miRNA) biomarkers in different biofluids -- including plasma, serum, and saliva -- has introduced a new paradigm in biomarker discovery. Now, researchers say salivary miRNA could provide a noninvasive way to detect oral squamous cell carcinoma and perhaps monitor the disease's development in oral lichen planus patients. Read about the new study, outlined in the Journal of Dental Research.
Finally, Singapore researchers have discovered a distinct mutational signature and nine significantly mutated genes associated with nasopharyngeal cancer. Click here to read about the first comprehensive genomic study of the disease, which is prevalent in southern China and Southeast Asia, including Singapore.
