Biologists identify key step in lung cancer evolution

Wednesday, May 10, 2017 - 12:21 in Health & Medicine

Lung adenocarcinoma, an aggressive form of cancer that accounts for about 40 percent of U.S. lung cancer cases, is believed to arise from benign tumors known as adenomas. MIT biologists have now identified a major switch that occurs as adenomas transition to adenocarcinomas in a mouse model of lung cancer. They’ve also discovered that blocking this switch prevents the tumors from becoming more aggressive. Drugs that interfere with this switch may thus be useful in treating early-stage lung cancers, the researchers say. “Understanding the molecular pathways that get activated as a tumor transitions from a benign state to a malignant one has important implications for treatment. These findings also suggests methods to prevent or interfere with the onset of advanced disease,” says Tyler Jacks, director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the study’s senior author. The switch occurs when a small percentage of cells in the tumor begin acting like...

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