Innovations in Oral Cancer Research
Understanding how viruses cause oral cancer and how our bodies interact with these viruses is very important to preventing infection throughout the body, not just in the mouth. Oral cancer research at the College of Dentistry covers a wide range of focus areas including innovative early detection methods; rapid, non-invasive, gene expression based diagnosis of oral cancer, changes in cells that occur with aging and effects of DNA damage; study of the development of human papillomavirus (HPV) associated cancers at the molecular level; and understanding how stem cells regulate telomere length and how disrupted telomere maintenance can lead to tumor formation and metastasis. Research performed at the UIC College of Dentistry Center for Molecular Biology of Oral Diseases, are focused on development of new treatments for head and neck cancer patients, and of new molecular diagnostic tools to better assess clinical outcomes in patients at risk for oral cancer.
• Keiko Watanabe’s lab has two main focuses: 1). the effects of periodontitis on prediabetes and T2DM and, 2.) early detection of oral cancer. Periodontitis is a chronic inflammatory disease that leads to loss of tooth supporting bone. Oral SCC is an aggressive epithelial malignancy that is the sixth most common neoplasm in the world today. This team is studying the precise mechanism responsible for the association between periodontitis, T2DM, and obesity, using animal model systems. To advance early detection of oral cancer, the team is applying various methods to determine if PTK6 can be used as a prognostic marker to identity premalignant lesions which ultimately become malignant.
• Charles Zhou’s Lab is focused on molecular profiling of oral cancer. The lab’s primary research interest is to utilize high-throughput genomics and bioinformatics technologies to gain a better understanding of this disease process and to develop novel diagnostic tools for head and neck/oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) patients.
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