EDITORIAL

摘要

Upcoming in February is World Cancer Day. This aims to raise awareness of the disease and to encourage prevention, detection and treatment. Oral cancer is the eighth most common cancer in the world, with a relatively high mortality rate. Survival rates vary on location, size and staging, but these have changed little globally since the 1970s. The mainstays of treatment being surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy where appropriate. Unless advances are made in the detection and treatment of oral cancers, survival rates will not improve. Recently, I attended a conference hosted by the Association of British Academic Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (ABAOMS) in Cardiff. I was fortunate to hear a fascinating lecture entitled 'Using the immune system to fight cancer' by Professor Andy Sewell of Cardiff University. This lecture highlighted this relatively new modality for cancer treatment and really piqued my interest. Cancer immunotherapy primarily focuses around the use of T cells to detect and kill cancer cells and was named as the breakthrough of the year in 2013 by Science Magazine.