The Pathogenesis and the Potential Medical Treatment of Ameloblastoma
Julia Yu Fong CHANG, DDS, PhD
School of Dentistry
National Taiwan University
Ameloblastoma is the most common benign odontogenic neoplasm of dental epithelial origin in jaw bone but with aggressive behavior and a high recurrence rate. Nowadays wide surgical resection of the jaw bone is the only treatment available and recommended, which can cause further loss of craniofacial complex function and esthetics. The knowledge of pathogenesis of ameloblastoma remains limited until recent high frequency of BRAF and SMO mutations identified in ameloblastomas, especially FGFR2-RAS-BRAF-MAPK pathway has been identified as the most frequent mutation occurring pathway in ameloblastomas. Among all mutations, BRAF(V600E) mutation is the most common mutation in ameloblastomas. Since these mutations have been identified in other tumors and targeted therapies for these mutations are available. As the first step of using targeted therapy for treating ameloblastoma in the future, we have studied the frequency of common mutations in ameloblastomas in Taiwan, have determined the reliable detection method for BRAF(V600E) mutation in ameloblastomas and have investigated the cellular effects of BRAF(V600E) to dental epithelial cells and the potential drug resistance problem.
