Hello everyone!

I just wanted to share some good news. I had a cat-scan last week and went to my CCC to see my doctors today. Everything looks great! In fact, the doctors couldn't believe how well I've healed from both my neck dissection and glossectomy. I've been working out and eating right and am currently in the best shape of my life. I feel great!

I also wanted to share some news that might be of interest to many of you. I've learned about a new screening test that allows for easier detection of head and neck cancers. It was developed by Elizabeth J. Franzmann, a professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Miami. Research that Franzmann conducted and subsequently published in Cancer Epedimiology Biomarkers and Prevention revealed that approximately 79 percent of the head and neck cancer patients tested had high levels of a particular molecule, CD44, in their saliva when compared to a control group of healthy volunteers. From what I've learned, CD44 is a protein that is expressed--and shed--by squamous cell carcinomas, which account for almost all head and neck cancers. The test requires patients to gargle with saline for five seconds and then spit in a cup, where the results are tested. My doctor told me today that the results look promising and that patients may soon be easily diagnosed with just a swish of a special saline mouthwash.

All the best,
Gino

Gino,
This a great positive message. Cool to hear of your cat scan results and about the research being done. Very Nice thanks. lenny

Gino,

Glad to hear of your good results! My dentist also mentioned a swish in your mouth thing that then marks abnormalities in the mouth, kind of like the tablet we used to chew in grade school and it showed red where you missed brushing. She is planning on using that screening for all of her patients. Now if I could just remember where I put the name of it...

Continued good health to you!

Sincerely,
Lisa

Lisa,

My oral surgeon had something like that -- I think it was toluidine blue (turns your entire mouth blue until you can get home and brush your teeth thoroughly). It doesn't replace a biopsy, but it can show where some potential problems might exist.

Cathy

The biomarker work in the first post is one of several that involve salivary diagnositics funded to the tune of about 60 million dollars in research grants over the last 9 years by the NIH and the NIDCR, and which has yeilded lots of good data. The most useful one so far and probably the first to reach market will be the salivary diagnositic work mentioned in several news stories in the oral cancer in the news section of the main web site. This was done at several university research locations but the primary investgator is David Wong at UCLA. This month I am doing two TV interviews with him related to the science and the emerging technologies. Not only does it find from a drop of saliva on a computer chip reader things like SCC, but it is also capable of finding the biomarkers for diabetes, breast cancer, and more.... all in saliva. Toludine blue is a stain which has been around for decades, and is the dye that is commonly used on pathology slides to distinguish SCC in biopsy samples. Zila has for several years tried to get it through the FDA as a diagnositic tool in vitro (not on a slide of dead cells but in the living tisuues of the mouth) but hasn't been anble to get it past them. They came out with the dye as a marker in the mean time under a less sophisticated approval with lesser claims, that lets it get to market ( I believe that their real hope is that doctors will use it "off label" and outside the FDA guidelines as more than just at 510k approved marking device.) It was originally going to be marketed as a mouth rinse (acetic acid first - vinegar, and then the die under the name OraTest, but now it is marketed on a pre-soaked swap q-tip.