Understanding why lung cancer spreads
MIT cancer biologists have identified a genetic change that makes lung tumors more likely to spread to other parts of the body. The finding offers new insight into how lung cancers metastasize and could help identify drug targets to combat metastatic tumors, which account for 90 percent of cancer deaths.The researchers, led by Tyler Jacks, director of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, found the alteration while studying a mouse model of lung cancer. They then compared their mouse data to genetic profiles of human lung tumors and found that reduced activity of the same gene, NKX2-1, is associated with higher death rates for lung-cancer patients.This study represents an important step in understanding how changes that disable this gene would make tumors more aggressive, says Monte Winslow, a senior postdoctoral associate in Jacks’ lab and lead author of a paper on the work appearing in...