958 | CANCER DISCOVERY�SEPTEMBER 2013 www.aacrjournals.org

NEWS IN BRIEF

HPV Vaccine May Provide Oral Protection

The fi rst clinical trial to investigate the effectiveness of human papilloma-virus (HPV) vaccination against oral infections suggests that the vaccine prevents such infections, which can promote head and neck cancers. How-ever, researchers caution that whether the vaccine cuts the risk of these can-cers remains to be determined.

Oropharyngeal cancers triggered by HPV, particularly by the high-risk sub-types 16 and 18, have surged in recent decades. In 2011, a study led by Maura Gillison, MD, PhD, of Ohio State University in Columbus, reported that the incidence of oropharyngeal cancers testing positive for HPV increased by 225% between 1988 and 2004 (J Clin Oncol 2011;29:4294–301). Although researchers have found that HPV vaccination curbs infections and precancerous lesions at several body sites, including the cervix, they lack comparable data for the oropharynx.

The new work is an offshoot of a large project designed to gauge how well vaccination guards against HPV infections and precancerous lesions in the cervix. More than 7,000 women in Costa Rica received either a vaccine against HPV subtypes 16 and 18 (Cer-varix; GlaxoSmithKline) or a control vaccine against hepatitis A. After the study had begun, the organizers decided to test for oral infections and obtained samples of oropharyngeal cells from nearly 6,000 of the participants.

“What is striking is that there seems to be a strong effect of the vaccine,” says lead author Rolando Herrero, PhD, of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France. Four years after the injections, only one of the more than 2,900 women who received the HPV vaccine showed an oral HPV infection, whereas 15 of the more than 2,900 subjects in the control group did. That’s a 93% lower incidence in the HPV-vaccinated group, the team reported (PLoS ONE 2013;8:e68329).

Stephen Goldstone, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, NY, who wasn’t involved with the research, says the study has “a clear-cut positive result.”

Because the researchers didn’t set out to test the vaccine’s effects against oral infections, they couldn’t determine if any subjects already had such infec-tions at the beginning of the study. That means the vaccine could be even more potent than the results indicate, Goldstone says.

Ohio State’s Gillison, who also didn’t participate in the Costa Rica study, notes that researchers still need to determine whether preventing HPV oral infections forestalls oropharyngeal cancer. “It’s a very good study, but it falls short of being able to make public policy recommendations,” she says. ■

University of Kentucky Gains NCI Designation

Kentucky, which ranks fi rst in the nation for cancer mortality and second for cancer incidence, is now home to a National Cancer Institute (NCI)–designated cancer center—the University of Kentucky’s (UK) Markey Cancer Center.

Awarded in July, the recognition means that the Markey Cancer Center will annually receive up to $1.5 million in additional federal funding, and its ability to attract grants and other monies will be bolstered. In addition, patients will be able to access treat-ments and clinical trials available only at NCI-designated cancer centers. The UK Markey Cancer Center becomes the 68th medical center in the country to receive the distinction.

Earning the designation has been a lengthy process involving the improve-ment of many of the facilities and research programs at Markey, says Mark Evers, MD, the center’s direc-tor. “Luckily, we’ve had a tremendous amount of institutional and commu-nity support,” he says.

Since 2009, the cancer center has raised over $100 million to construct 20,000 square feet of state-of-the-art research space, upgrade clinical facilities, and recruit 35 new faculty members.

Strong cancer screening and preven-tion programs helped the Markey Cancer Center achieve its new status. Many of these programs target the Appalachian region of Eastern Ken-tucky, which has some of the highest

PEOPLE

Richard I. Fisher, MD, has been named president and CEO of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, PA, which is part of the Temple University Health System, and

will also hold the title of cancer center director of Fox Chase. He succeeds Michael Seiden, MD, PhD.

Before joining Fox Chase as its execu-tive vice president in March, Fisher was vice president for strategic and program development and a professor of medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center. In addition, he served as director of the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and director of cancer services for the Strong Health System, all in Rochester, NY.

Fisher has held several national lead-ership positions in oncology. For the past 28 years, he served as chair of the Lymphoma Committee of SWOG. He has also served as chair of the Lymphoma Research Foundation Scientific Advisory Board and as a member of the National Cancer Institute’s Lymphoma Steering Committee.

Margaret K. Offermann, MD, PhD,began a 1-year term as president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) on

July 1. A federation of 27 life sciences organizations that collectively have more than 100,000 members, FASEB strives to improve health by promoting educa-tion in biologic and biomedical sciences and by advocating for the biomedical research community in Washington, DC.

Offermann is a managing partner at the Salutramed Group, Inc., a consulting firm for life sciences companies in Atlanta, GA. Previously, she was deputy national vice president for research at the American Cancer Society. She has also been a professor of hematology and oncology at Atlanta’s Emory University School of Medicine and associate direc-tor of its Winship Cancer Institute.

Fo

x C

ha

se C

an

cer

Ce

nte

rR

uss

ell

M. M

ed

ford

, MD

, Ph

D

Research. on February 19, 2021. © 2013 American Association for Cancercancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org Downloaded from

Published OnlineFirst August 8, 2013; DOI: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-NB2013-110

SEPTEMBER 2013�CANCER DISCOVERY | 959

NEWS IN BRIEF

healthy tissue in the operating room (Sci Transl Med 2013;5:194ra93). The device, developed by researchers at Imperial College London in the UK and MediMass of Budapest, Hungary, couples an electrosurgical knife with a mass spectrometer.

The team creating the “iKnife” hopes surgeons eventually will use the tool to make sure they cut out as much cancerous tissue as possible while doing minimal damage to sur-rounding healthy tissue. Additionally, the chemical information gathered during surgery might supplement cur-rent diagnostics for cancer.

Tumors have different chemical sig-natures than healthy tissue. Analysis of these signatures via mass spec-trometry could help cancer surgeons remove tumors but leave suitable margins of healthy tissue, providing a faster, more data-rich alternative to sending samples to a pathologist dur-ing surgery. The iKnife couples exist-ing electrosurgical equipment with a technique known as rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry to pro-vide analyses in near-real time.

Electrosurgery produces surgi-cal “smoke” as a byproduct; these systems are already fi tted with vents and exhaust systems to clear that smoke. The iKnife diverts it into the mass spectrometer for analysis. The system determines what kind of tissue is being cut by analyzing its lipodomic profi le, and displays that information to a surgeon with a delay of about 0.7 seconds, says Jeremy Nicholson, PhD, professor of surgery and cancer at Imperial College London and one of the iKnife’s developers.

Nicholson and his colleagues fi rst used the iKnife to analyze tissue samples from 302 patients, creating a database of chemical information on 1,624 cancerous and 1,309 noncancer-ous tissues. They used this data to build the software tool that identifi es tissues. After testing the system in 91 cancer operations in which standard pathology also was performed, the team confi rmed the data from the iKnife in postoperative histological analysis. Classifying tissues from the breast, stomach, colon, liver, lung, and brain as either cancerous or healthy, the system’s sensitivity was 97.7% and specifi city was 96.5%.

Peixan Guo, PhD, professor of nanobiotech-nology at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy and Markey Cancer Center and director of its nanobiotechnology center, is one of 35 new faculty recruits over the last 5 years.

Jim

Mo

rris

, Un

ive

rsit

y o

f K

en

tuck

y H

ea

lth

Ca

re

cancer rates in the United States. One NCI-funded program called “Faith Moves Mountains” takes investigators into rural churches to conduct cancer screening and research.

One of the program’s initiatives aims to improve cervical cancer screening rates by encouraging Appalachian women to get Pap smears. Appalachia has a 60% higher mortality rate for the disease than the rest of the country, yet mortality is almost 100% prevent-able through regular screenings. “The project has been very effective in increasing the number of women screened for cervical cancer,” says Evers.

In addition to these efforts, the Markey Cancer Center boasts strong basic research programs in colorectal, lung, and head and neck cancers, the three types of cancer most prevalent in Kentucky.

New drug development is also a focus of the center, including a project through which researchers collect soil samples from the state’s old mines. Because the samples are taken from depths of up to 4,800 feet below the Earth’s surface, they are a rich source of previously unstudied microbes. By iso-lating and identifying the natural prod-ucts the microbes produce, researchers might fi nd a new way to treat or prevent cancer. “We’ve already identifi ed some potentially benefi cial and novel natural compounds,” says Evers, who declined to name the compounds, as they are in an early phase of development. ■

Surgical iKnife Identifies Cancer Tissue

A surgical knife that doubles as a chemical probe can help surgeons distinguish between tumor and

Nicholas Winograd, PhD, professor of chemistry at Pennsylvania State Uni-versity at University Park, who special-izes in applying mass spectrometry to image biological tissues, is excited about the results. He says the iKnife does a particularly good job with statistical analysis to make the call about what the chemical data mean, quickly, in a system that’s simple enough for doctors without years of chemistry training to adopt. “Getting mass spec into the operating room is a holy grail, and this has taken us closer to it,” he says. ■

Games Crowdsource Cancer Research

While you stand in line to pick up a latte or catch a bus this fall, you’ll also be able to help discover new treatments for cancer. In July, Cancer Research UK announced plans for GeneGame, a mobile phone game in which players identify genetic mutations associated with particular cancers. Set to debut in October, GeneGame is the latest gaming effort to tap into the collective intel-ligence of the public to tackle complex questions in cancer research.

“Games are built around motivation, around getting people to be engaged in a task,” says Andrew Su, PhD, of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. Although not directly involved in the Cancer Research UK initiative, Su has created numerous such “crowd-sourcing” projects in biology. “If we

In the Cell Slider initiative, participants exam-ine images of breast tissue like this one, deter-mine whether there are any cancer cells, and, if so, count the number of cancer cells. Players are then asked to determine the proportion of yellow-stained cells and the brightness of the yellow, which corresponds to greater estrogen receptor levels.

Ca

nce

r R

ese

arc

h U

K

Research. on February 19, 2021. © 2013 American Association for Cancercancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org Downloaded from

Published OnlineFirst August 8, 2013; DOI: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-NB2013-110

2013;3:958-959. Published OnlineFirst August 8, 2013.Cancer Discovery     University of Kentucky Gains NCI Designation

  Updated version

  10.1158/2159-8290.CD-NB2013-110doi:

Access the most recent version of this article at:

   

   

   

  E-mail alerts related to this article or journal.Sign up to receive free email-alerts

  Subscriptions

Reprints and

  .pubs@aacr.org

To order reprints of this article or to subscribe to the journal, contact the AACR Publications Department at

  Permissions

  Rightslink site. Click on "Request Permissions" which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center's (CCC)

.http://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/content/3/9/958.3To request permission to re-use all or part of this article, use this link

Research. on February 19, 2021. © 2013 American Association for Cancercancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org Downloaded from

Published OnlineFirst August 8, 2013; DOI: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-NB2013-110