Study by National Institutes of Health illuminates origins of lung cancer who do not have history of smoking. The genomic analysis of lung cancer in people with no history of smoking has found that a majority of these tumors arise from the accumulation of mutations caused by natural processes in the body.
New Delhi: The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has revealed the mystery of how lung cancer arises in people who have never been smokers and may guide the development of more precise clinical treatments. The genomic analysis of lung cancer in people with no history of smoking has found that a majority of these tumors arise from the accumulation of mutations caused by natural processes in the body.
This study was conducted by an international team led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and describes for the first time three molecular sub types of lung cancer in people who have never smoked. The findings were published recently in Nature Genetics.
“What we’re seeing is that there are different sub types of lung cancer in never smokers that have distinct molecular characteristics and evolutionary processes,” said epidemiologist Maria Teresa Landi, M.D., Ph.D., of the Integrative Tumor Epidemiology Branch in NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, who led the study, which was done in collaboration with researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, another part of NIH, and other institutions. “In the future we may be able to have different treatments based on these sub types.”
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Every year, more than 2 million people around the world are diagnosed with the disease. Environmental risk factors, such as exposure to radon, air pollution, and asbestos, or having had previous lung diseases, may explain some lung cancers among never smokers, but scientists still don’t know what causes the majority of these cancers.
Link to the study – https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-illuminates-origins-lung-cancer-never-smokers
