Scientists have made a discovery that may help prevent some people from developing lung cancer, which kills more people worldwide than any other cancer. <\/p>\n
A team of more than 80 researchers working across four continents have identified a set of proteins in the blood that accurately predict lung cancers more than five years before diagnosis. The scientists also found early evidence that an existing anti-inflammatory drug could significantly reduce lung cancer risk in people with elevated concentrations of these proteins, which they linked to inflammation.<\/p>\n
More research is needed before a test based on these proteins could be ready for use in patients. And scientists would still need to run a randomized trial to determine whether the drug prevents lung cancers. Still, outside experts said the findings, which were published on Thursday in the journal Cell<\/a>, offer a promising starting point toward a long-held public health goal.<\/p>\n \u201cPreventing lung cancer has been a missing holy grail for a very, very long time,\u201d said Dr. Douglas Arenberg, a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study. The authors may have identified a biological marker that \u201cnot only predicts risk but also predicts the probability of benefit from a given drug\u201d for prevention, he said.<\/p>\n Over the past two decades, the medical community has made much progress on lung cancer, due in large part to screening programs that detect it sooner and to targeted drugs and immunotherapies that can extend life even in patients with late-stage disease. Still, lung cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide, and fewer than one-third of people diagnosed survive past five years.<\/p>\n \u201cPrevention is the solution in my mind,\u201d said Dr. Charles Swanton, an oncologist and clinical director of the Francis Crick Institute in the United Kingdom who was the senior author of the paper. <\/p>\n Led by Dr. Swanton, Dr. Tej Pandya, a Ph.D. student, and other researchers took a set of 48,000 blood samples from the UK Biobank and used machine learning to identify 14 proteins associated with the development of lung cancer. When the researchers looked at the presence of those proteins and also took into account a patient\u2019s age, smoking status and history of lung disease, they were able to predict who would develop lung cancer more accurately than the best risk assessment models currently in use.<\/p>\n The researchers validated the 14-protein \u201csignature\u201d in eight additional data sets from around the world, including one data set from Taiwan that primarily included people who had never smoked.<\/p>\n Using mouse and cell models, the scientists showed that these proteins increased when a specific inflammatory pathway was activated. Smoking and air pollution can activate that pathway.<\/p>\n This adds to the evidence that it isn\u2019t just genetic mutations caused by smoking, pollution or other factors that are driving lung cancers. Rather, Dr. Swanton said, the findings suggest that \u201csmoke causes mutations and inflammation, which together cause cancer.\u201d They also found that the signature was increased in people who later developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pulmonary fibrosis, pointing to a common inflammatory environment upstream of all three diseases.<\/p>\n