Here is a wire service report about another "spit test" developed by researchers at UCLA (Brian, is the the same one you referred to earlier in this thread?). I am sure the journal article referred to will show up in the OC in the News feed (as will this Reuters article) but I haven't seen either one yet -- hence this post.

Yes this is the same team, same test that we have been following with Dr. Wong at UCLA for the last 5 years in the news section of the web stie. They are now in the process of mapping additional disease markers besides oral cancers (proof of principle was done on that actually almost a year and a half ago) that can be found in saliva. This is actually a rerelease (for the purpose of keeping the school etc. in the news) of old news. You have to remember that individuals in the lab there, who are working on their own doctorates, need to publish to finish their Ph.D. work, and these kinds of articles are published for that purpose as well. The stating of the markers in this article makes it appear new, but the test is the same test, markers are the same, just stated openly now that the research has been protected.

I've heard about the saliva test in a presentation that compared VelScope and Vizilite among other new tests. It sounds great. I'm wondering, though, would it detect cancers in the throat? What about cancers that are not submucosal, like tonsil cancer.

The answer is likely no. But oral cancers do not start in the throat. Swishing a solution around in your mouth, and gargling with it will pick up cell cast offs from everywhere. Of course no method is 100%.

You have your phraseology a bit off. Cancers of the epithelium like SCC start in the basal cells (not on the surface) and migrate towards the surface epithelium over time. The mucosa is the outermost covering of the upper epithelium in the mouth. Lastly you are assuming that what these test looks for is in the cells, and that is not always true. In the saliva are the protein biomarkers that they are looking for, not in exfoliated cells. Only those that are evaluating cell aberrations as markers care about cells. The Wong/UCLA work is not based on cellular material but proteomics. The proteins that they are interested in are in the saliva, not cells, and therefore that is why salivary diagnostics is more interesting than what is being done on exfoliated cells at other institutions. It DOES find things which are not necessarily on the surface yet.