Dental News - Rice University to work on dental office cancer test

Daniel Zimmermann, DTI

Thu. 5 November 2009

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NEW YORK, NY, USA/LEIPZIG, Germany: Researchers at the BioScience Research Collaborative at Rice University in Houston in the US have received a US$2 million grant from the US National Institutes of Health for the development of a new test for detecting oral cancer. The test, which utilises latest LED and nano microchip technology, aims to provide an accurate diagnosis in less than 30 minutes, and can be performed in the dental office. Additional tests for the detection of cardiovascular diseases and HIV are also in development, the researchers said.

Oral cancer affects about 300,000 people per year worldwide, and most cases are diagnosed in the late stages. If oral cancer is detected early, the prognosis for patients is excellent, with a five-year survival rate of more than 90 per cent. Unfortunately, the actual five-year survival rate for oral squamous cell carcinoma is only about 50 per cent, amongst the lowest rates for all major cancers.

“We want to provide an accurate diagnosis for oral cancer using a minimally invasive test that requires no scalpels or off-site lab tests,” said principal investigator Prof. John McDevitt, Rice’s Brown-Wiess Professor of Chemistry and Bioengineering. “The payoff for this could be tremendous because oral cancers today are typically diagnosed much too late in their development.”

According to McDevitt, the test is being developed in collaboration with other scientists from universities in the US and the UK.

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