Ten-minute test could reveal presence of cancers in mouth

The international research team, including scientists from Sheffield University and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has been awarded $2m from the National Institutes of Health in the United States to develop the test which involves a dentist simply using a brush to collect cells from a patient's mouth.

Currently, oral cancer is detected using a scalpel to perform a biopsy on the patient, followed by off-site laboratory tests which can be time-consuming. By contrast, the new test involves removing cells with a brush, placing them on a chip and inserting the chip into an analyser, which provides a result in between eight and 10 minutes.

As well as proving convenient for patients, the new test will also cut waiting times and save the NHS money.

Professor Martin Thornhill, who is leading the team in Sheffield, said: "This new affordable technology will significantly increase our ability to detect oral cancer in the future.

"Diagnosis currently involves removing a small piece of tissue from the mouth and sending it to a pathologist. This is typically done at a hospital, can take a week or more and involve extra visits for the patient.

"With the new technology, a brush would be used to painlessly remove a few cells from the lining of the mouth that would be analysed within minutes in the presence of the patient, so that the patient would know the result before leaving the clinic.

"This technology will make it easier for us to screen suspicious lesions in the mouth and separate non-cancerous lesions from those where there is a risk of cancer and those where cancer has already developed." Clinical trials to perfect the technology are now being carried out on patients at Charles Clifford Dental Hospital in Sheffield.

If the trials confirm that the new technology is as effective as carrying out a biopsy, then it could be regularly used at dental surgeries in the future.

If oral cancer is detected early, the prognosis for patients is excellent, with a five-year survival rate of more than 90 per cent. Unfortunately, many oral cancers are not diagnosed early and the overall survival rate is only about 50 per cent – among the lowest rates for all major cancers.

Professor Thornhill, who is professor of oral medicine at Sheffield University and a consultant in oral medicine in Sheffield, added: "We have just started to recruit patients to a study that is designed to ensure that the new technology is at least as good as the old method at distinguishing these different types of lesion.

"Ultimately, dentists and doctors may be able to use this technology to check suspicious lesions in the mouth and reassure the vast majority of patients that they haven't got cancer without even having to send them to the hospital."

The international project is being led by Professor John McDevitt from Rice University in Houston, Texas, who has developed microchip technology which shrinks many of the main functions of a laboratory onto a chip which is the size of a credit card.

They can be slotted like a credit card into a battery-powered analyser.

Here the cells come into contact with biomarkers that

react with specific types of diseased cells which are distinguished by the way they glow in response to light shone on them.

The technology is also being considered for future research projects looking at heart attacks, diabetes and other diseases.