News Brief by Frederick Lu
Every year, over 40,000 people are diagnosed with lung
cancer and less than 10 percent of patients will live more than 5 years after
the initial diagnosis. One reason why survival rates are so low is that two
thirds of patients will be diagnosed with advanced stage cancer, which
decreases the odds of successful treatment. Now, scientists in the UK may have
made a major breakthrough in the development of lung cancer. By studying seven
patients, they found that after the initial cancer causing mutations, the tumor
will remain dormant for years until additional mutations cause it to become
more invasive. This means that treatments that target specific genetic errors
fail because it will only affect a limited portion of the tumor. The remaining
parts, caused by different mutations, are still free to continue growing.
The researchers, led by Professor Charles Swanton of Cancer Research UK's London Research
Institute and the UCL Cancer Institute, hope that the results of their study
will help early detection of the disease and hope that this new understanding
of cancer development will allow them to predict how a tumor grows.
Cancer Research UK. "Lung cancer can stay hidden for over 20 years." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 October 2014. .
Posts
