Oral cancer is the sixth most common cancer in the world and in the United States, it affects about 40 thousand Americans each year. Dr. David Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Oral/Head and Neck Oncology Research, says about half of those affected by oral cancer die within five years.

"The clinical survival of this disease hasn’t changed in the past thirty years. However, if this disease could be detected earlier, absolutely that would change that."

Wong led the most comprehensive analysis ever conducted of RNA molecules in human saliva and found it has many of the same disease-revealing molecules contained in blood. This can lead to non-invasive early detection of many diseases, and for oral cancer the benefits would be significant.

"If you catch this one person’s tumor instead of stage four and catching the tumor at stage 1, you immediately confer this individual a sixty percent improvement in survivability rate over five years, a dramatic improvement in the quality of life and a significant reduction in health care costs."