Interest of studying the saliva metabolome, transcriptome and microbiome in screening for pancreatic cancer.

INTRODUCTION: Pancreatic cancer is a public health problem because its mortality rate is close to its incidence rate. If it were possible to detect this cancer before the onset of symptoms, 5-year survival could reach 75%. Numerous studies have attempted to accelerate the diagnosis to improve survival. Saliva presents interesting characteristics as a fluid for screening and diagnosis. Its many components provide a promising source of constitutive biomarkers with a specific signature of the disease. The aim of this work was to determine the interest of studying the metabolome, the transcriptome and the microbiome of saliva in screening for pancreatic cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A review of the literature was conducted using the PubMed search engine. The last search was conducted in July 2017. RESULTS: Nine references, all original studies, published between 2010 and 2017 were included. DISCUSSION: Different combinations of metabolites, RNA and bacteria were found. Analysis of the saliva transcriptome and metabolome seems to be the most promising avenue. CONCLUSION: The identification of an early salivary signature of pancreatic cancer is still in its infancy and the results obtained here must be confirmed in larger prospective multicentre studies.

Duration of treatment with bisphosphonates at the time of osteonecrosis of the jaw onset in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Review.

INTRODUCTION: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a frequent and co-morbid condition. One of the main complications is induced osteoporosis. Treatments related to this complication significantly modify oral and implant management. Affected patients represent a population at intermediate risk of osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ). The objective was to search the literature for durations of treatment with bisphosphonates at the time of ONJ occurrence in patients with RA in order to obtain an average duration. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A bibliographic search in the PubMed/Medline database was carried out using the following equation "(osteonecrosis and jaw) and rheumatoid arthritis" with no time limitation. The primary study endpoint was the duration of treatment with bisphosphonates (BP) at the time of ONJ onset in patients with RA. RESULTS: Twelve articles accounting for 50 patients were included. Patients had had a median of 46.8 months of treatment with BP before ONJ occurred. Mean, minimum and maximum treatment times were 48.68, 6 and 120 months, respectively. The standard deviation was 27.77 months. DISCUSSION: The median treatment duration in our cohort of patients with RA was less than that reported for osteoporosis. We therefore, recommend that practitioners take additional precautions regarding oral surgery or implant procedures, particularly in patients with RA who have been treated with BP for more than 4 years.

Characterisation of human gingival neural crest-derived stem cells in monolayer and neurosphere cultures.

Neural crest (NC)-derived stem cells (NCSC) have an exceptionally wide differentiation potential, but their use in regenerative therapy has been hampered by their scarcity in adult tissues and complex isolation protocols. Human oral mucosal gingiva may provide an attractive source of these cells as it contains NC-derived cells, the tissue is easily accessible and wound healing is fast and scarless with very little morbidity. To this end, we first investigated whether NC-derived cells are retained in adult gingiva by examining 8-months-old NC-reporter Wnt1-Cre/R26RYFP mice. We then hypothesised that gingival cell NC-like phenotype can be further enhanced by floating neurosphere cultures generated from standard human gingival fibroblast (GF) and pooled CFU-F (GSC) cultures. Findings showed that NC-derived cells are retained in the gingival connective tissue of aged mice. Human GFs and GSCs expressed NC-related genes nestin, Snai1, Twist1, Pax3, Sox9 and FoxD3, and generated neurospheres. This was mediated via calcium- and connexin 43-dependent cell communication, which is similar to neurospheres formed by neural progenitors. Cells in the spheres showed significantly increased expression of NC-related genes, and down regulation of fibroblast-related type I collagen. Structurally, the neurospheres were polarised with nestin positive cells located on the outer layers underlined with an extracellular matrix rich in molecules typical to embryonic NC. Sphere-derived cells expressed significantly elevated levels of neural markers, and differentiated into Tau, neurofilament-M and GFAP-positive cells suggesting neural differentiation potential. Thus, human GF and GSC cultures may provide an efficient source of NC-derived cells via enrichment by floating sphere cultures.