Nov 8, 2005

The Missing Link In Lung Cancer?

A single protein may be all that may take for a normal healthy lung to develop into lung cancer as per the latest research form Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Researchers at Vanderbilt University found that type 2 receptors for Transforming Growth Factor-b (TGF-b), which is a family of proteins that controls key functions such as cell growth and death, were missing in non-small cell lung cancer victims. Further studies were carried out in mouse with injection of lung cancer cells and this showed that only smaller and less aggressive tumors were developing in those mice carrying the type 2 TGF-b receptors.

"We've established for the first time that these important molecules are either missing or that their action is reduced in three-quarters of all cases of lung cancer," said lead researcher Professor Pran Datta. "When we restored the molecules in lung cancer cells in mice, they reduced the ability of the cells to grow as tumors," he wrote in the British Journal of Cancer.

Now that link between type 2 TGF-b receptors and lung cancer the task would be to find out how or why the key receptor molecules go missing as the disease develops, in order to find a way of treating it..

Most mammalian cells express three abundant high affinity receptors which can bind and be cross-linked to TGF-b: the type 1), type 2 , and the type 3 receptors. While TGF-b1 binds with high affinity to the type I, II and III receptors at the cell surface, TGF-b2 binds with high affinity only to the type III receptor while binding poorly to the majority of the type I and type II receptors.



Janet      Return to Cancer Blog Main

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Janet      

Cancer
We do not know the exact cause of many cancers. Many cancers like leukemia have no apparent cause. Some other types of cancers like lung cancers have identifiable causes like smoking in most cases. Lung cancer can occur in those who have never smoked in their life. It is hard to know in these cases what is causing that patients lung cancer. Factors that increase the risk of development of cancer is known as risk factors for cancer. These risk factors may be modifiable like smoking where a person can exert control or un-modifiable factors like age and gender. Smoking can cause cancers of the lungs, mouth, throat, bladder, kidneys and several other organs.