Purpose Visual inspection and biopsy is the current standard of care for oral cancer diagnosis, but is subject to misinterpretation and consequently to misdiagnosis. Topically applied PARPi-FL is a molecularly specific, fluorescent contrast-based approach that may fulfil the unmet need for a simple, in vivo, non-invasive, cost-effective, point-of-care method for the early diagnosis of oral cancer. Here, we present results from a phase I safety and feasibility study on fluorescent, topically applied PARPi-FL.
Translational Relevance Despite their accessible location, oral cavity cancers are often diagnosed late, especially in low-resource areas where their incidence is typically high. The high prevalence of premalignant and benign oral lesions in these populations contributes to a number of issues that make early detection of oral cancer difficult: even in experienced hands, it can be difficult to differentiate cancer from premalignant or benign lesions during routine clinical examination; and biopsy-based histopathology, the current standard of care, is invasive, prone to sampling error, and requires geographic access to appropriate health care professionals, including a highly trained pathologist. While seemingly impenetrable economic and infrastructure barriers have confounded the early diagnosis of oral cancer for most of the world’s population, these could be circumvented by a simple, in vivo, non-invasive, cost-effective, point-of-care method of diagnosis. We are attempting to address this unmet clinical need by using topically applied PARPi-FL — a molecularly specific, fluorescent contrast-based approach — to detect oral cancer.
Roberts Lab 