Tumor Growth May Be Slowed Or Halted By Common Food Preservative

Nisin, a common food preservative, may slow or stop squamous cell head and neck cancers, a University of Michigan study found.

What makes this particularly good news is that the Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization approved nisin as safe for human consumption decades ago, says Yvonne Kapila, the study's principal investigator and professor at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry.

This means that obtaining FDA approval to test nisin's suggested cancer-fighting properties on patients in a clinical setting won't take as long as a new therapy that hasn't been tried yet on people, she says.

Read More

Cancer Survivors With Chronic Dry Mouth Benefit From First Human Gene Therapy Study In Human Salivary Glands

Gene therapy can be performed safely in the human salivary gland, according to scientists at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health.

This finding comes from the first-ever safety, or Phase I, clinical study of gene therapy in a human salivary gland. Its results, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also show that the transferred gene, Aquaporin-1, has great potential to help head and neck cancer survivors who battle with chronic dry mouth. Aquaporin-1 encodes a protein that naturally forms pore-like water channels in the membranes of cells to help move fluid, such as occurs when salivary gland cells secrete saliva into the mouth.

Read More