New research has emerged in Clinical Cancer Research which could aid in the diagnosis of oral cancer by looking at saliva, specifically MicroRNAs.
MicroRNAs are molecules produced in cells that have the ability to simultaneously control activity and assess the behavior of multiple genes. Knowing the that microRNA is present in saliva represents a major step for the detection of oral cancer at an early stage.
“It is a Holy Grail of cancer detection to be able to measure the presence of a cancer without a biopsy, so it is very appealing to think that we could detect a cancer-specific marker in a patient’s saliva,” said Jennifer Grandis, M.D.
David T. Wong, D.M.D., D.M.Sc. and his colleagues measured microRNA levels in the saliva of 50 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma and also in 50 healthy control patients. They were able to detect approximately 50 microRNAs in the saliva.
Two specific microRNAs, miR-125a and miR-200a, were present at significantly lower levels in patients with oral cancer than in the healthier control patients. Further and larger research is needed to better be able to more forward with this ability to detect MicroRNA in salivia.
Adapted from materials provided by American Association for Cancer Research.