Another potential biomarker for lung cancer discovered
Scientists from Boston Univeristy have found that a class of molecule called microRNA regulate the gene expression changes in airway cells that occur with smoking and lung cancer. These findings may lead to a new biomarker for smoking-related lung diseases.
It is estimated that over 1.2 billion people smoke in the world. That brings over 5 million deaths per year. Of course, smoking is a very important factor in lung cancer development, and it’s the leading cause of cancer death in the United States and all around the world. Because of the lack of biomarkers, doctors are unable to detect the lung cancer in early stages of disease — that’s why many patients with lung cancer never recover and eventually die.
“The research we performed suggests that smoking-dependent changes in microRNA expression levels mediate some of the smoking induced gene expression changes in airway epithelium and that microRNAs therefore play a role in the host response to environmental exposures and may contribute to the pathogenesis of smoking-related lung cancer,” said Avrum Spira, MD, one of the authors.
The scientists claim that they hope that microRNA profiles obtained from these cells may serve as relatively non-invasive biomarkers for smoking-related lung diseases.
“These microRNA changes may serve as more robust biomarkers in clinical samples given their role as regulators of multiple mRNAs and their relative resistance to degradation,” said Frank Schembri, MD, one of the authors.
The paper is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The project was funded by Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute Grant, National Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Grant.
Source: bu.edu
