After examining several hundred thousand mouths for early detection of oral cancer and diagnosis of oral precancer, the dental team at the TIFR was of considered opinion that nothing worked better than a thorough clinical examination by a competent professional. If there is suspicious lesion, then take a biopsy.

Thank you so much Dr. Prakash for the answer. This has made me a bit more curious here. I would like to know if there is any published account for the same? And what all techniques did they use? Did they use the recent markers? And, although biopsy remains the gold standard but what was the proximity the other techniques made in terms of sensitivity and specificity to oral cancer?

And excuse me for my little knowledge but what is the full form of TIFR?

TIFR is the Tata institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. Starting from late 1960s, there are about 50 publications in international peer-reviewed journals on epidemiology and related aspects of oral precancerous lesions and early detection of oral cancer derived from population-based cross-sectional and cohort studies in six states of India

Oh yes, I do know Tata Institute and everybody knows them. They have done a tremendous job in research all around! I just dint know its complete name was Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. They must be having a lot of literature on the subject!

I did a quick survey on google scholar with the keywords "Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Oral Cancer Diagnosis" and included the time frame to be 2000-13. I went uptil 15th page of g scholar. I found the following article :

"Methylene blue as an early diagnostic marker for oral precancer and cancer" 2013

The results of MB uptake were compared with a simultaneous biopsy of these

lesions. Pathologically confirmed precancers and cancers were the positive targets of this screening, while hyperkeratosis without dysplasia and no evidence of malignancy were sorted as negative subjects of screening. The results revealed sensitivity of 91.4%, specificity of 66.6%, positive predictive value 97.7% and negative predictive value 33% leading to diagnostic accuracy of MB stain to 90%. We state that MB staining is useful diagnostic tool in community oral cancer screening programmes for high-risk individuals.

Its quite a contemporary technique for early diagnosis. There was only one article which stated about the non- invasive early diagnosis of oral cancer. I was very surprised to find that. I know google scholar is not that important but pubmed dint fetch me any results on that too. I am not having any access to any publishers right now and I understand that this is not enough evidence to say that they are not a great research institute, rather I seek your help to please share this question with anyone on the dental team of TIFR, so that all the inquisitive and curious minds get their answers on this question.

Thank you so much for the answers.

http://www.springerplus.com/content/pdf/2193-1801-2-95.pdf

unfortunately the Dental Research Unit at the TIFR closed down during mid-1990s and all research dentists left. I do have contact with some, not sure they are on Researchgate

Ok, I see. Thanks anyways Dr. Prakash. Actually there has been a lot done in the last decade and I was also very keen on doing something about it in my graduation. I run a non-profit for the cause of oral cancer and I am planning to set up a protocol, through which we can set up some easy and non invasive diagnosis for oral cancer.

I hav attached a paper in which through oral smears through exfoliative cytology and examining few DNA aneuploidy they achieved sensivity to 98.2%, specificity to 100%, positive predictive value to 100% and negative to 99.5%.

Unfortunately the full paper is not available here but the results can be seen. I suppose more is there in some literature, we might not be able to access or not have seen yet, if you come across anything, please share here.

http://iospress.metapress.com/content/8ycmljlkm661qxy3/

hi anirudh

the TIFR studies were done by a team led by dr. fali mehta, a renowned dental surgeon from bombay.

i had the previlege of knowing him.

he was a giant in this particular field.and he brought dr.pindborg to bombay for the first conference.of our world zoroastrian dental organisation.

incidentally, he too, was a parsee, as i am.

if you type dr.fali mehta in google, you would get better results.

i know a lot of dentists who were with him in this study...it was, and still is, the most exhaustive study on oral pre-cancer and cancer screening ever undertaken not only in india, but world-wide.

if you still dont find what you want, or want more details, pl contact me.

my email is [email protected] and you can call me on +919221291669.

all the best.

Dr. Havewala,

Thanks so much for your reply.

I will soon contact you in this regard!

WIth regards

Anirudha

Does anyone look at MMP levels in these samples, and are you interested in doing this? We have substrates suitable or Mmp detection that can be used in saliva. Would anyone be interested in testing me for correlations with oral cancer?

They have tested on MMP on saliva, and the results have been the following :

MMP1 expression in primary OSCC (n = 119) was >200-fold higher (P = 7.16 × 10−40) compared with expression levels in nonneoplastic oral epithelium from controls (n = 35). qRT-PCR results on 30 cases and 22 controls confirmed this substantial differential expression. The exceptional discriminatory power to separate OSCC from controls was validated in two independent testing sets (AUC% = 100; 95% CI: 100–100 and AUC% = 98.4; 95% CI: 95.6–100). Salivary concentrations of MMP1 and MMP3 in OSCC patients (33 stage I/II, 26 stage III/IV) were 6.2 times (95% CI: 3.32–11.73) and 14.8 times (95% CI: 6.75–32.56) higher, respectively, than in controls, and displayed an increasing trend with higher stage disease.

I have attached the article here for your review

http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/20/12/2628.long

Here is a review i found on salivary markers for oral cancer. It almost covers everything, if you find anything interesting that we may carry on with something. I am interesed in some research on this.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3210231/pdf/12291_2011_Article_149.pdf

Optical detection was suggested for upper aerodigestive tract lesions