Funded Projects

The remarkable success of current cancer therapy, including radiation, chemotherapy, and transplantation, has enabled significant improvement in mortality and morbidity. There has been a clear shift from cancer survival alone to include quality of life with these treatments. Among the post-treatment complications, a major referral to dental clinics focus on oral mucositis, xerostomia, and dysgeusia (taste dysfunction). Various chemotherapy drugs have been shown to result in loss or aberrancies in a taste sensation that causes significant patient morbidity. While this loss is usually transient and usually recovers (often partially after treatment is stopped), the discomfort and perceptual imbalance leading to profound changes in diet and nutrition that has a major impact on their quality of life. Interestingly, the clinical observation of recovery of functional taste perception indicates there is an inherent ability for normal taste bud cell regeneration that could be potentially harnessed. Among various approaches in promoting oral wound healing, the use of low dose biophotonics treatments, termed Photobiomodulation (PBM) therapy, has shown remarkable efficacy. There is strong clinical evidence for the use of this therapy for oral mucositis and it is poised to become standard of care for all cancer patients receiving chemo, radiation or transplants to prevent oral mucositis. In this proposal, the Medler lab will generate a chemotherapy rat model, the Arany lab will develop PBM treatment protocols, the Medler-Torregrossa lab will analyze taste perception while the Scannapieco lab will analyze salivary changes affected by PBM therapy and taste recovery. These studies will generate critical preliminary data and tangibly demonstrate our collaborative efforts for a future full grant submission.