Smoking alters the evolutionary trajectory of non-small cell lung cancer.

Smoking alters the evolutionary trajectory of non-small cell lung cancer. Exp Ther Med. 2019 Nov;18(5):3315-3324 Authors: Yu XJ, Chen G, Yang J, Yu GC, Zhu PF, Jiang ZK, Feng K, Lu Y, Bao B, Zhong FM Abstract Smoking is the biggest risk factor for lung cancer. Smokers have a much higher chance of developing lung tumors with a worse survival rate; however, non-smokers also develop lung tumors. A number of questions remain including the underlying difference between smoker and non-smoker lung cancer patients and the involvement of genetic and epigenetic processes in tumor development. The present study analyzed the mutation data of 100 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, 12 non-smokers, 48 ex-smokers and 40 smokers, from Tracking Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Evolution through Therapy Consortium. A total of 68 genes exhibited different mutation patterns across non-smokers, ex-smokers and smokers. A number of these 68 genes encode membrane proteins with biological regulation, metabolic process, and response to stimulus functions. For each group of patients, the top 10 most frequently mutated genes were selected and their oncogenetic tree inferred, which reflected how the genes evolve during tumor genesis. By comparing the oncogenetic trees of non-smokers and smokers, it was identified that in non-smokers, the mutation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) was an early genetic alteration event and EGFR was the key driver, but ...
Source: Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine - Category: General Medicine Tags: Exp Ther Med Source Type: research