U-M Team Wins Dean Millard Award

Ann Arbor, MI — February 16, 2012 — A team of six researchers at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry and the Medical School has won a major award for their work that may one day enable oral health care providers and physicians to use a patient’s saliva to help determine if the patient has head and neck cancer.

The team received the H. Dean Millard Award for the best paper in oral medicine published in the journal Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology, Oral Radiology and Endodontology in 2011.  The journal is the official journal of professional associations representing these five dental specialties.

Under the direction of Dr. Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch, associate dean and clinical professor of dentistry, and Dr. Nisha D’Silva, associate professor of dentistry and associate professor of pathology at the Medical School, the team investigated the quality of saliva from salivary glands recovering from radiation therapy for head and neck cancers to determine if the saliva contained measurable amounts of proteins.  Identifying these proteins is a necessary first step in using saliva as a diagnostic tool in this patient population since these proteins may be key to detecting a possible recurrence of head and neck cancers.  The five-year recurrence rate is approximately 50 percent.

Presently, detection and diagnosis of cancer recurrence requires biopsies and expensive imaging tests.  Using a patient’s saliva to detect recurrence of head and neck cancers has not yet been developed since conventional radiation therapy usually destroys the salivary glands.  But during the past decade, radiation techniques have been developed at U-M and elsewhere which help preserve salivary function. 

“Until now, the quality of recovered saliva has never been assessed,” Murdoch-Kinch said.  “Our research was designed to determine if proteins that are present in small amounts could be detected in saliva.”  The results of the study, she added, showed that “recovered saliva” following radiation treatment “contains salivary gland proteins, so it may be possible to use saliva for diagnosis, once a suitable marker for cancer is identified.”

D’Silva said the results of the research that were published last July “are the first step in identifying salivary markers that detect oral cancer.  Additional research will be necessary before dentists or physicians are able to use this as a tool to help their patients.”  Having an easily accessible salivary test, she added, “offers a patient a less expensive approach for monitoring cancer recurrence by decreasing the frequency of more expensive imaging studies.”

Other members of the research team included Dr. Thomas Braun, associate professor, School of Public Health and associate professor of dentistry; Dr. Avraham Eisbruch, professor of radiation oncology at the Medical School; Nickole Russo, graduate student research assistant; and Dr. Stacy Griffith, who was a dental student when the study was conducted.

The H. Dean Millard Award is named for Dr. Herbert Dean Millard, School of Dentistry professor emeritus.  During his distinguished 37-year clinical and teaching career, Millard spearheaded the creation of the School’s Department of Oral Diagnosis and helped U-M gain international recognition with World Workshops in Oral Medicine.  He also established the Dr. H. Dean Millard Endowed Scholarship at the School of Dentistry.