Researchers from Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and at the National Cancer Institute has found out a protein that appears to play a essential role in lung cancer in non-smokers. It opens up the possibilities for new lung cancer treatment for this deadly malignancy.

They hope that the new finding (lung cancer treatment) could further improved chemotherapy for lung cancer in both never-smokers and smokers, including those with tumours resistant to targeted drugs such as gefitinib and erlotinib.

The findings, published online recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  They hope that the new finding could further improved chemotherapy for lung cancer in both non smokers and smokers, including those with tumours resistant to targeted drugs such as gefitinib. American and Japanese scientist involved in this new study believe that the miR-21 protein is not only a marker of disease, like PSA levels are in prostate cancer screenings, but an actual contributor to the cancer process

During examining lung tumors from patient who had never smoked and the research found high levels of a molecule called miR-21. The levels were even higher in tumors that had mutations in a gene called EGFR, a common feature of lung cancer in never-smokers.

 "Several important lung cancer drugs target EGFR mutations, but these agents are ineffective in about 30 percent of cases in which the mutation is present," says co-principal investigator Dr. Carlo M. Croce, professor of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. "Our study suggests that developing agents to inhibit miR-21 might improve these anti-EGFR therapies."

Core and his scientist’s team examined lung cancer sample from 28 cases of lung tumor tissue and all of them are non smoker who had adnocarcinoma. Nearby healthy lung tissue from non smokers for changes in micro RNA, molecules that help cells regulate the kind and amount of proteins they make.

MiR-21 is also elevated in tobacco-related adenocarcinoma, but to a lesser extent. Earlier research also showed that elevated levels of miR-21 and other micro RNAs were markers for poor survival in smoking-related lung cancer. According to researcher Harris.

  The researchers took cells that had a mutated EGFR gene and treated them with an anti-EGFR agent, it related two therapies for specific lung cancers follow the line of scientific though-   gefitinib and erlotinib.  As expected, the drugs were most effective killing the cancer cells. But when they blocked both EGFR and MIR-21, the proportion of cells killed rose still more

 "It's a long road from 'bench to bedside,'" Lichtenfeld said of the findings  "But clearly this study offers the suggestion that there can be an effective lung cancer treatment for nonsmokers whose adenocarcinoma shows miR-21 elevation

Source:  Curtis Harris, M.D., U.S. National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Darrell E. Ward Ohio State University Medical Center, the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute and Center for Cancer Research

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