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	Thursday 24th May 2001 New Technology To Beat Oral Cancer? A new system has been developed that could predict whether a patient with oral leukoplakia is at risk of developing oral cancer, reports e-dental. White patches in the mouth, or leukoplakia, may disappear without any ill effects, but sometimes they may develop into oral cancer. A paper discussing Medical Solutions plc’s Fairfield DNA Ploidy System has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The research, authored by Dr Jon Sudboe and colleagues of the Norwegian Radium Hospital, was in the form of a ‘blind’ study and 150 patients with the dysplastic form of oral leukoplakia took part. Digital imaging technology was used with a computer-controlled microscope to analyse the cell nuclei from a biopsy of each patient, and to compute the amount of DNA per cell. Those with a normal amount of DNA per cell (‘diploid’) were found to have a low risk of developing cancer (97-per-cent survival rate), while those with white patches and abnormal amounts of DNA (‘aneuploid’) were at high risk (16-per-cent survival rate). Also, a third group of 20 patients was discovered. These had double the normal amount of DNA per cell (‘tetraploid’), and had a medium risk of developing cancer (40-per-cent survival rate). The study found that the chances that a diploid case would not develop cancer was 97 per cent, and the chances that an aneuploid case would develop cancer was 84 per cent. It was also found that the cumulative risk of a person with an aneuploid lesion progressing to cancer was almost 28 times higher than if the lesion had been diploid. Dr Trevor Twose, CEO of Medical Solutions, said, ‘This study supports the potential of the Fairfield DNA Ploidy system for assessing these mouth lesions. We are seeking to make this technology widely available to healthcare professionals to assist in the assessment of cases of leukoplakia, and we are also collaborating with several clinical investigators to test this technology in a wider range of cancers.’