Innovative Approach to Triage Oral Precancer

Plain-language summary

Oral cancer is a major health problem worldwide, accounting for 274,000 new cases and 145,000 deaths annually. On average, half of the patients die within 5 years of an oral cancer diagnosis. Most troubling, however, is the lack of significant change in prognosis for this disease over the last 4 decades, even in developed nations. Even when successful, treatment of oral cancer can be devastating due to diminished quality of life and disfigurement. The key to controlling this disease is early identification of lesions that are at high risk of progression and provide effective treatment. The overall objective of the team is to integrate clinical, pathological, molecular, and imaging data to create a robust oral cancer risk model to predict the risk of progression of OPLs and to develop population-wide cost-effective prevention strategies for high-risk oral premalignancies. The project will involve 4 specific aims as described in detail below. Aim 1. To use molecular data to stratify low-grade OPLs into high- and low-risk groups. Aim 2. To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of various follow-up frequency that use LOH at chromosome 9p21 as a risk marker. Aim 3: To evaluate the specificity and sensitivity of using imaging technologies as a tool for the decision of the high-grade or high-risk biopsy site. Aim 4. To assess the clinical utility of a miRNA expression signature derived from serum collected from patients with oral cancer and OPLs.

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