Lung Cancer Blog

May 4, 2009, 5:22 AM CT

Women more vulnerable to tobacco carcinogens

Women appears to be more vulnerable than men to the cancer-causing effects of smoking tobacco, as per new results reported this week at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO), Lugano, Switzerland.

Swiss scientists studied 683 patients with lung cancer who were referred to a cancer centre in St Gallen between 2000 and 2005 and found women tended to be younger when they developed the cancer, despite having smoked on average significantly less than men.

"Our findings suggest that women may have an increased susceptibility to tobacco carcinogens," report Dr Martin Frueh and his colleagues.

Dr Enriqueta Felip from Val d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, conference co-chair, notes that the results support a growing awareness that smoking presents greater risks to women than men.

"In the early 1900s lung cancer was reported to be rare in women, but since the 1960s it has progressively reached epidemic proportions, becoming the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States," Dr Felip said.

"Lung cancer is not only a man's disease, but women tend to be much more aware of other cancers, such as breast cancer," she said. "Several case-control studies seem to suggest that women are more vulnerable to tobacco carcinogens than men"......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

April 13, 2009, 1:25 PM CT

Racial disparities in the treatment of lung cancer

Black patients suffering from lung cancer are less likely to receive recommended chemotherapy and surgery than white patients with lung cancer, a disparity that shows no signs of lessening. That is the conclusion of a newly released study reported in the May 15, 2009 issue of CANCER, a peer-evaluated journal of the American Cancer Society. The study's findings indicate that efforts are needed to provide appropriate therapys for black patients and to educate them about the value of those therapys.

Scientists led by Dale Hardy, Ph.D., of the University of Texas School of Public Health analyzed data from 83,101 patients 65 years old or older who were diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer, the most common type of lung cancer, between 1991 and 2002. They looked for racial differences in therapy, the first attempt to address the changes in receipt of therapy over time for this disease.

The scientists observed that for patients with early lung cancer, blacks were 37 percent less likely than whites to receive recommended surgery and 42 percent less likely to receive recommended chemotherapy. For patients with later stage of the disease, blacks were 57 percent less likely to receive recommended chemotherapy than whites. Older patients, women, and those with lower socioeconomic status also experienced greater disparities in receiving therapy......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

January 6, 2009, 9:07 PM CT

Controlling indoor radiation to improve lung cancer risk

About 1100 people each year die in the UK from lung cancer correlation to indoor radon, but current government protection policies focus mainly on the small number of homes with high radon levels and neglect the 95% of radon related deaths caused by lower levels of radon, as per a research studypublished on bmj.com today.

The authors argue that installing basic and cheap measures to prevent radon in all new homes would be more cost-effective and have greater potential for reducing lung cancer deaths caused by radon, and UK Building Regulations should be amended to enforce this.

Radon in the home is a natural air pollutant produced by the decay of uranium in the ground. Radon gas seeps into buildings through cracks and holes in the foundations and when it decays it produces particles that can enter the lungs and expose them to damaging radiation.

At present, government policies in the UK concentrate on searching for homes with high levels of radon and encouraging homeowners to take remedial action at their own expense.

Professor Alastair Gray, Professor Sarah Darby and other colleagues from the University of Oxford, assessed the contribution of indoor radon to lung cancer deaths in the UK, and examined the cost- effectiveness of policies to control radon exposure. They used recent evidence on the risk of lung cancer from indoor radon, based on data from 7,000 people with lung cancer and more than 21,000 people without lung cancer across Europe. They then calculated the lifetime risk of lung cancer death before and after various interventions to control radon, and the costs involved......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

October 9, 2008, 10:36 PM CT

Tobacco smuggling is killing more people than illegal drugs

Tobacco smuggling causes around 4,000 premature deaths a yearfour times the number of deaths caused by the use of all smuggled illegal drugs put togetherbut the UK government is not doing enough to tackle the problem, claim experts on bmj.com today.

Professor Robert West from the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre and his colleagues argue that more smokers would quit if cigarettes cost more, but at around half the price, smuggled tobacco is keeping the prices down.

Around 21% of all tobacco smoked in the UK is smuggled into the country. If there were no smuggling, the price of legal tobacco would increase by around 12%. As per the authors, this would lead to 5-8% of smokers kicking the habit saving at least 4000 lives a year.

A reduction in tobacco smuggling would also help reduce health inequalities because low income smokers are more likely to use smuggled tobacco and they are also more likely to quit because of price increases.

While the authors acknowledge that tobacco smuggling has reduced considerably since the government 'Tackling Tobacco Smuggling' strategy was announced in 2000, they argue that more needs to be done and call for more action and resources to tackle the problem.

For example, the UK government has not followed the lead of all the other European Union countries and has failed to sign up to legally enforceable agreements with the two tobacco companies, Philip Morris International and Japan Tobacco International, to ensure that they tightly control and regulate distribution and stop supplying contractors involved in smuggling......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

September 16, 2008, 10:19 PM CT

Pazopanib shrinks lung cancers before surgery

Pazopanib, a new oral angiogenesis inhibitor, has demonstrated interesting activity in difficult to treat non-small-cell lung cancer, US researchers report.

In a phase II trial, 30 out of 35 patients treated with preoperative pazopanib for a minimum of two weeks saw their tumor size shrink by up to 85%.

"This is a positive result that will be explored further," said Prof. Nasser Altorki from Weil Medical College of Cornell University in New York.

"To my knowledge, no other results on the effect of angiogenesis inhibitors in early stage operable lung cancer have been published.

The results presented here with pazopanib indicate a highly active drug in this setting and further development in lung cancer is underway to fully understand the value of this drug in this disease"......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

July 16, 2008, 9:00 PM CT

Tobacco industry manipulated cigarette menthol content

Menthol cigarette brands have been rising in popularity with adolescents, and the highest use has been among younger, newer smokers. Scientists at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) explored tobacco industry manipulation of menthol levels in specific brands and found a deliberate strategy to recruit and addict young smokers by adjusting menthol to create a milder experience for the first time smoker. Menthol masks the harshness and irritation of cigarettes, allowing delivery of an effective dose of nicotine, the addictive chemical in cigarettes. These milder products were then marketed to the youngest potential consumers.

The paper, "Tobacco Industry Control of Menthol in Cigarettes and Targeting of Adolescents and Young Adults," appears in the online "First Look" section of the American Journal of Public Health in advance of publication in the September 2008 issue.

"For decades, the tobacco industry has carefully manipulated menthol content not only to lure youth but also to lock in lifelong adult customers," said Howard Koh, Professor and Associate Dean for Public Health Practice at HSPH and a co-author of the paper.

Lead author Jennifer M. Kreslake, a research analyst, and his colleagues from the Tobacco Control Research Program at HSPH evaluated internal tobacco industry documents on menthol product development, conducted laboratory tests to measure menthol content in U.S. brands, examined market research reports and drew data from the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an annual nationally representative survey among U.S. residents aged 12 years and older. The industry documents revealed that tobacco companies researched how controlling menthol levels could increase brand sales among specific groups. The companies determined that products with higher menthol levels and stronger perceived menthol sensation suited long-term smokers of menthol cigarettes while milder brands with lower menthol levels appealed to younger smokers......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

July 14, 2008, 9:45 PM CT

Perceived access to cigarettes predicts youth smoking

Washington, DC Kids who see cigarettes as easily accessible are more likely to end up as regular smokers, especially if they have friends who smoke, as per a new report reported in the current issue of Annals of Family Medicine The study, funded by the Substance Abuse Policy Research Program (SAPRP) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, could be valuable to smoking intervention efforts by allowing health professionals to identify and target high-risk children.

We observed that if you get kids to answer just two simple questions would it be easy for you to get a cigarette? and do you have friends who smoke? you can identify those who are at high risk of becoming regular smokers, said lead author, Chyke Doubeni, PhD, with the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Saying yes to either should raise a red flag and prompt doctors and others to talk with parents and kids about how to avoid smoking.

The scientists interviewed 1,195 sixth-graders in Massachusetts who had never before puffed on a cigarette or who smoked less than once a week. They followed them from January 2002 to February 2006.

Over the four years of the study, 177 students tried out smoking and 109 became regular smokers. All those who picked up the habit either agreed with the statement it would be easy for me to get a cigarette or acknowledged having a friend who smoked or both. The scientists also observed that perceptions of accessibility and prevalence of peer smokers both intensified as the kids got older. At the start of the study, 21 percent of the participating students perceived cigarettes as easily accessible and only 9 percent had friends that smoked. By the fourth year of the study period, 50 percent perceived easy access to cigarettes and 32 percent had friends who smoked. Also, the study observed that as they get older, kids appear to become more aware of which stores sell cigarettes......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

May 26, 2008, 8:08 PM CT

Genetic mutation and risk of lung cancer

Carriers of a common genetic disorder previously associated with lung disease may have a 70-percent to 100-percent increased risk of lung cancer, as per a report in the May 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

The disorder, alpha1-antitrypsin deficiency (1ATD), is one of the most common genetic conditions affecting the U.S. population and particularly those of European descent, as per background information in the article. Individuals with two copies of the associated genetic mutation often develop emphysema at an early age. However, 1ATD carriersthose with only one copy of the mutated genedo not normally have severe diseases correlation to 1ATD and may not be aware of their status. However, they may be more vulnerable to cancer-causing tobacco smoke than non-carriers.

Ping Yang, M.D., Ph.D., and his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., tested for 1ATD carrier status in 1,443 lung cancer patients. In addition, 797 community members without lung cancer and 902 siblings of patients with lung cancer were tested as controls. Information was gathered about all participants smoking history, demographic characteristics and family history of cancer.

A total of 13.4 percent of the patients with lung cancer and 7.8 percent of unrelated controls were 1ATD carriers. When lung cancer patients were in comparison to non-related controls, 1ATD carriers had a 70 percent higher risk of developing lung cancer than non-carriers. Comparing lung cancer patients to their cancer-free siblings, 1ATD carriers had twice the risk of developing lung cancer. The scientists estimated that 1ATD carrier status may account for 11 percent to 12 percent of the lung cancer patients enrolled in the study......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

April 2, 2008, 10:14 PM CT

Researchers ID gene linked to lung cancer

Scientists at Johns Hopkins, as part of a large, multi-institutional study, have found one gene variant that is associated with an increased risk of lung cancer. The study would be reported in the April 3 issue of Nature Genetics.

The research team collected DNA from 1,154 smokers who have lung cancer and 1,137 smokers without lung cancer. Each DNA sample was analyzed at more than 300,000 points, looking for variationsknown as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs for shortbetween those with cancer and those without. They then analyzed the top 10 SNPs in an additional 5,075 DNA samples from smokers with and without lung cancer.

Two of the 10 SNPs were consistently linked to lung cancer risk and both of them are located in chromosome 15 inside a region that contains genes for the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor alpha subunits 3 and 5, which already are suspected to play a role in lung cancer progression.

The research team then wondered if these genetic associations relate to nicotine dependence, and observed that the same two SNPs also are weakly linked to smoking behavior.

The power of genome-wide analysis is to look at a number of markers and a number of samples at once, which can reveal weak genetic associations in complex diseases like lung cancer. says Kimberly Doheny, Ph.D., assistant director of the Center for Inherited Disease Research at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

April 1, 2008, 9:08 PM CT

New method to test for lung cancer

Scientists from Boston University School of Medicine have developed a new clinicogenomic model to accurately test for lung cancer. The model combines a specific gene expression for lung cancer as well as clinical risk factors. These findings currently appear on-line in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States and the world, with more than one million deaths worldwide annually. Eighty-five to 90 percent of subjects with lung cancer in the United States are current or former smokers with 10 to 20 percent of heavy smokers developing this disease.

A prior study by the same scientists reported a gene expression biomarker capable of distinguishing cytologically normal large airway epithelial cells from smokers with and without lung cancer. However, the biomarker has limited sensitivity depending on the stage and the location of the cancer.

Studying current and former smokers undergoing bronchoscopies for suspicion of lung cancer, the scientists compared the likelihood of the subjects having lung cancer using the biomarker, the clinical risk factors and a combination of the two -- clinicogenomic model. They found patients using the clinicogenomic model had increased sensitivity, specificity, positive value and negative predictive value of their cancer in comparison to the other methods......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

March 9, 2008, 5:18 PM CT

Cannabis based medicines may help smokers to quit

Smokers trying to quit in the future could do it with the help of cannabis based medicines, as per research from The University of Nottingham.

Teams of pharmacologists, studying the cannabis-like compounds which exist naturally in our bodies (endocannabinoids), are exploring the potential for medical therapy. This includes treating conditions as diverse as obesity, diabetes, depression and addiction to substances like nicotine.

Researchers have known about endocannabinoids since the mid-1990s. This led to an explosion in the number of scientists looking into the future medical uses of cannabinoids and cannabis compounds.

Dr Steve Alexander, Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences, focused on many these projects in editing the first themed podcast for the British Journal of Pharmacology.

Dr Alexander said: "It is clear that there is very realistic potential for cannabinoids as medicines. Researchers are looking at a range of possible applications".

One of these scientists is Professor David Kendall, a cellular pharmacologist at the University: "The brain is full of cannabinoid receptors. And so, not surprisingly with diseases like depression and anxiety, there's a great deal of interest in exploiting these receptors and in doing so, developing anti-depressant compounds"......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

March 4, 2008, 5:22 PM CT

Surgery for lung cancer better att teaching hospitals

Patients cared for by hospitals with residents in training have a 17 percent less chance of dying after lung cancer surgery compared with patients undergoing surgery at non-teaching hospitals, as per results of a Johns Hopkins study reported in the recent issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

Theres a public perception that teaching hospitals can be dangerous places because of training issues, and concerns are frequently voiced by patients and echoed in the press regarding a fear of physicians-in-training practicing on them, says the lead author of the paper, Robert Meguid, M.D., a surgical resident at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The data from our study help refute these fears.

The Johns Hopkins researchers looked at data from 46,951 patients, ages 18 to 85, who underwent surgery for lung cancer at hospitals across the United States between 1998 and 2004. Operations ranged from small lung-segment removal to total lung removal.

The scientists tracked discharges and deaths, and compared patient outcomes at three different types of hospitals - those with any type of doctor specialty training program, those with general surgery training programs and those with thoracic surgery training programs. They took into account factors such as age, gender and other illnesses of each patient, and they also took into consideration the number of each of the different types of lung cancer surgeries that each hospital performed......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

February 6, 2008, 9:24 PM CT

PET Outperforms CT In Malignant Lung Nodules

Researchers involved in a large, multi-institutional study comparing the accuracy of positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT) in the characterization of lung nodules found that PET was far more reliable in detecting whether or not a nodule was malignant.

"CT and PET have been widely used to characterize solitary pulmonary nodules (SPNs) as non-cancerous or malignant," said James W. Fletcher, professor of radiology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Ind. "Almost all previous studies examining the accuracy of CT for characterizing lung nodules, however, were performed more than 15 years ago with outdated technology and methods, and previous PET studies were limited by small sample sizes," he noted.

"Detecting and characterizing SPNs is important because malignant nodules represent a potentially curable form of lung cancer. Identifying which SPNs are most likely to be malignant enables physicians to initiate the proper therapy before local or distant metastases develop," said Fletcher.

In a head-to-head study addressing the limitations of previous studies, PET and CT images on 344 patients were independently interpreted by a panel of experts in each imaging modality, and their determination of non-cancerous and malignant nodules were compared to pathologic findings or changes in SPN size over the next two years......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

January 28, 2008, 10:57 PM CT

Number of Russian women smokers has doubled

In 1992, seven per cent of women smoked, compared to almost 15 per cent by 2003. In the same period, the number of men who smoke has risen from 57 per cent to 63 per cent.

The researchers behind the study, published in the journal Tobacco Control, blame the privatisation of the previously state owned tobacco industry and the behaviour of the transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) for what they describe as a "very worrying increase".

Between 1992 and 2000, TTCs such as Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International invested approximately US$1.7 billion to gain a 60 per cent share of the privatised Russian tobacco market.

Tobacco advertising had simply not existed in the Soviet era. Yet as soon as the TTCs were there, it was rampant, say researchers. By the mid 1990s it was estimated that half of all billboards in Moscow and three quarters of plastic bags in Russia carried tobacco advertising.

"There can be no doubt that the marketing tactics of Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and the like directly underpin this massive increase in smoking that spells disaster for health in Russia," said Dr Anna Gilmore from the School for Health at the University of Bath, who carried out the study with academics from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and University College London, and has been researching tobacco control in the region for over seven years......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

January 10, 2008, 10:33 PM CT

Cells That Promote Formation of Lethal Lung Metastases

Cancer patients commonly ask what can be done after a primary tumor has already spread, or metastasized, to other organs. In a number of cases, they learn, little can be done. Hence the importance of a discovery by researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) of a type of cell that regulates the transformation of small, dormant lung metastases into large, aggressive metastases - the kind that kill cancer patients.

The cells that promote the metastatic transformation are called endothelial progenitor cells, or EPCs, and are found in the bone marrow. The CSHL research team reports in the January 11 issue of Science that EPCs regulate an "angiogenic switch" - a key mechanism that causes formation of blood vessels in tumors and triggers tumor growth.

"A majority of cancerous primary tumors have already spread to other organs by the time they are clinically diagnosed," noted Vivek Mittal, Ph.D., head of the CSHL research team and corresponding author of the Science paper. "Current efforts are focused on preventing metastatic spread, yet, paradoxically, insights have been lacking on how dormant metastatic lesions, after they have colonized distant organs, grow into large, lethal lesions."

"Our study has focused on cells from primary tumors in mice that have spread and established micrometastases in secondary organs such as the lung," said Dingcheng Gao, Ph.D., a CSHL postdoctoral fellow and lead author of the Science paper. "We've dissected the heart of the angiogenic switch and demonstrated that micrometastases recruit EPCs from the bone marrow. These EPCs, in turn, regulate the angiogenic switch that activates blood-vessel growth and transforms these dormant lesions into life-threatening macrometastases"......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

January 8, 2008, 5:13 AM CT

Improving the prognosis of lung cancer

A group of researchers led by Professor Xavier Pars of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona, has published a research on AKR1B10, an enzyme that is detected in large quantities only in lung cancers, especially those caused by smoking. This enzyme can appear even when the cancer has still not developed and lesions are premalignant. Thus this molecule would serve as a good marker in the diagnosis and prognosis of the disease. Moreover, its activity could play a relevant role in the development of lung cancer, which makes the research of great interest for potential future therapeutical applications as well.

As per researchers, both the experiments using test tubes and cell cultures revealed that the enzyme lowers the levels of the most active form of vitamin A (retinoic acid), a strong antimalignant agent. This is achieved by its strong retinal reductase activity, which favours chemical reduction transformation, thus causing retinal, the precursor of retinoic acid, to transform into its least active form, retinol.

Retinoic acid is present in several biological processes - from fetus development to cell proliferation and differentiation - by controlling the expression of certain genes. The reduction of this acid within cells, which is precisely the effect produced by the enzyme under study, is linked directly to the lack of cell differentiation and therefore favours the development of the cancer. In order to discover why the enzyme acts this way, researchers obtained and studied its three-dimensional structure and located the elements responsible for its role in the onset of cancer among smokers. The identification of these structural elements makes it possible to create a specific design for drugs that can treat this disease. In fact, scientists were able to observe how the substance tolrestat, used as an inhibitor of the enzyme AKR1B1, or aldose reductase, responsible for a number of secondary complications of diabetes, also worked to inhibit the activity of the enzyme AKR1B10. Since both enzymes contain similar structures, research was carried out on its possible applications in the therapy of diabetes......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

January 2, 2008, 10:47 PM CT

Smoking rate among New York City teens

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, and Consumer Affairs Commissioner Jonathan Mintz released new data today from the 2007 New York City Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) showing that cigarette smoking among New York City teens declined by 20 percent between 2005 and 2007. The citys teen smoking rate has dropped by more than half over the past six years, from 17.6 percent in 2001 to 8.5 percent in 2007. The current rate that is about two thirds lower than the latest available national teen smoking rate of 23 percent. The Mayor linked the continuing decline which far exceeds the national decline to the Citys sustained efforts to reduce smoking among adults. Those efforts include a tax increase, the smoke-free workplace law, and TV and subway ads that graphically depict the realities of tobacco-related illnesses.

"In 2001, roughly one out of every six high school students smoked. Today, that has fallen to about one out of every 12 or about 8.5 percent of students," said Mayor Bloomberg. "The reduction in teen smoking weve achieved in New York City will eventually prevent at least 8,000 premature deaths. Ultimately, these new numbers prove what we in New York have long believed: when you take bold public health measures, you get results"......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

December 6, 2007, 8:14 PM CT

High school activities lowers risk of smoking

Scientists from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania reported today that students who participate in high school sports or individual physical activity are less likely to smoke than their classmates. The new study indicates that the protective effect of participation extends at least three years beyond graduation. The Penn team discovered, however, that girls do not derive the same level of protection from school sports as do boys.

Daniel Rodriguez, PhD, Research Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, reported that an adolescents self-assessment and sense of physical competence was an important aspect in smoking prevention. Students who feel successful continue to participate and are less likely to start negative behaviors. I visualize this as a fork in the road, Rodriguez said. If you are successful, then you continue doing sports. If you are not successful, then you are now in need of other reinforcement and start looking for other things. In that case, things like smoking become open to you.

Given the data, Rodriguez recommends that parents make an effort to get their children involved in organized activities whether it is a physical sport, like track and field, or some other organized activity, like the chess team and that they teach them how to properly evaluate their own skills. It is important that children learn to compare their current skills or performance to their past performance and not to that of their teammates or opponents. That way they can feel good about their skills, even if they are not the best at something......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

November 27, 2007, 10:15 PM CT

Tobacco marketers targeting teens near schools

Joe Camel may be long gone, but that doesnt mean tobacco marketers have abandoned their efforts to get young people hooked on smoking.

A new Canadian study reports that tobacco marketers have found a way around tobacco advertising restrictions, reaching teens by marketing in retail shops located near high schools. The findings, reported in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, suggest the strategy is working.

At the time of the study, we observed that, in comparison to retail stores near schools with low smoking prevalence, stores near schools with high smoking prevalence had significantly lower prices per cigarette, more in-store promotions and fewer government-sponsored health warnings, said University of Alberta researcher and co-author of study Candace Nykiforuk.

The tobacco marketing activity that takes place in storesknown as point-of-purchase (PoP) marketingis a sophisticated strategy designed to counter positive public health initiatives such as tax increases on tobacco, policies restricting cigarette advertising, and anti-smoking legislation, says Nykiforuk. U.S.-based studies have estimated that three out of four adolescents visit retail shops at least once a week, which makes the retail store a powerful venue where teens can be exposed routinely to PoP marketing......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source

November 13, 2007, 9:37 PM CT

Tumor-suppressor gene for lung cancer

The GPRC5A gene, which is under-expressed in human lung cancer cells, suppresses lung tumors in mouse models and could provide a key to attacking lung cancer in humans, scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the Nov. 21 edition of The Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The study observed that mice with both of their GPRC5A genes suppressed developed normally until their second year of life, when 76 percent developed premalignant lesions called adenomas in their lungs and another 17 percent developed malignancies called adenocarcinomas. Only 10 percent of mice with both GPRC5A genes intact developed adenomas, and only 11 percent with one working version of the gene. None of the mice in the latter two groups developed lung cancer.

"In humans, lung adenocarcinomas are the most common type of lung cancer and the major cause of death from this disease," says senior author Reuben Lotan, Ph.D., professor in M. D. Anderson's Department of Thoracic/ Head and Neck Medical Oncology. "Further study substantiating the role of the GPRC5A gene in human lung cancer could lead to the development of novel approaches for lung cancer prevention, diagnosis and therapy".

Lung cancer is the leading cause of deaths by cancer, killing 160,000 Americans annually......... Posted by: Justin234      Read more         Source