New Lung Cancer Genes Discovered
by andreas on Oct.26, 2008, under Lung Cancer
Map showing the distribution of lung cancer rates across the US. Areas displayed in red have the highest rates of lung cancer while green have the lowest.
Map of the US showing lung cancer rates. Red indicates high levels of cancer whereas green areas have a low rate of lung cancer.
Researchers have identified 26 genes associated with the most common type of lung cancer, adenocarcinoma — more than doubling the number of genes known to play a role in the deadly disease.
The discovery could help in developing individualized ways of diagnosing and treating lung cancer, the top cancer killer, the researchers said.
“Although similar, smaller cancer gene sequencing projects have been reported, our study is the largest to date and provides the statistical power to detect significantly mutated genes,” study co-author Richard Wilson, director of Washington University’s Genome Sequencing Center in St. Louis, said during a Tuesday teleconference.
The research, known as the Tumor Sequencing Project, has important implications for the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer, Wilson said. “But we consider it just a beginning. Over the next few years, we expect to extend this study both in terms of the number of individual cases that we study and the extent of the cancer genome we can explore,” he said.
Before the new research, 10 genes linked to adenocarcinoma had been identified, including six of the 26 reported in this study.
