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Lab-on-a-Chip Device Developed to
Screen for Oral Cancer
 Lab-on-a-Chip
Oral Cancer Screening Tests
University of Texas at Austin Press Release
Austin, Texas
This year about 34,000 Americans will be
diagnosed with oral or throat cancer. These types of cancer
will result in over 8,000 deaths this year, or about 1 person
every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Of the 34,000 newly
diagnosed oral cancer patients, only half will be alive in
5 years. The prognosis for this group of cancer patients has
not significantly improved over the last few decades. Worldwide
the problem is much greater, with over 350,000 new cases each
year.
The reason for the high mortality rate here is that oral cancer
is typically discovered only in the late stages of its development.
Once discovered, oral cancer is particularly dangerous because
it tends to produce second site, primary tumors. Unfortunately,
for patients that do survive a first encounter, they have
up to a 20 times higher risk of developing a second type of
cancer. There are many types of oral cancers, but 90% fall
into the type of squamous cell carcinomas.
Many oral cancer patients are diagnosed during a dental exam.
While there are some tools used by dentists to help diagnose
the disease, most of the tools lack the sensitivity and selectivity
to make this diagnosis reliable or are associated with side
effect for the patient. New methodologies that can be used
at the point-of-care are desperately needed to help improve
the diagnostic and prognostic capabilities for this area.
Follow up visits which serve to follow the progression of
the disease after treatment are one area that may be particularly
well suited for a lab-on-a-chip portable oral cancer screening
unit. We are now involved in an active collaboration supported
by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research
Division of the NIH that pairs the McDevitt lab at the University
of Texas at Austin with the labs of Dr. Spencer Redding and
Dr. Chih-Ko Yeh at the University of Texas Health Science
Center at San Antonio.
In this paper published in Lab on a Chip (featured on inside
front cover), we describe a lab-on-a-chip system that may
be suitable for the screening of oral cancer patients.more...(pdf)
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