The lead researcher on all this is David Wong at UCLA who is an OCF board member. David and I did 5 TV interviews in the last month on the technology. We also recorded a filmed piece to be shown at this years ADA meeting where all the dentists and auxillaries in attendance will have a chance to have the saliva test at no charge to familiarize them with the process.

We (OCF) have been putting numerous news stories up over the last couple of years as the technology developed and it is now ready for commercialization. The NIH/NIDCR has invested about 67 million in this through grants over the last 8 years, and now the money is going to those mapping additional RNA biomarkers. The amazing thing is that while SCC was the proof of principal disease, we now know that we can find diabetes and even breast cancer RNA markers in saliva. The samples are read by a computer chip, and it will find the markers BEFORE a visible lesion appears on the mouth. This will become a means to mass screen huge populations of individuals without the need for an exam by any kind of doctor or dentist, find those who will then be classified as high risk (with the biomarkers) who will go on a visual screening protocol with a doctor at 90 day intervals. We will then be finding in those individuals, as either pre cancers or CIS or stage one patients, disease at very survivable stages. That means that in the long run the death rate will come down via early discovery and staging. The important thing for the dental community and other medical professionals to understand, is that we no longer can safely say we know who the high-risk individuals are (historically smokers and heavy drinkers) because of the emerging, fast growing population of viral related patients. This test system wil provide a way of sorting out those at risk separate from history taking. That does not mean that smokers etc. will not still be considered high risk, It just means that a core group which is getting missed now, viral patients, and those patients whose doctors are less enthusiastic about looking at masses of patients only to find a few with serious disease will be caught early regardless of doctors qualifications or desires.

A single drop of saliva on a slide read by a chip, gathered by anybody.

Brian, stage 4 oral cancer survivor. OCF Founder and Director. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.