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Scientists reveal lung cancer breakthrough
Scientists said today that they had made an important discovery in the fight against a severe form of lung cancer which affects 10,000 people in the UK each year.
Experts at the Hammersmith Hospital and Imperial College London have been analysing small cell lung cancer.
This type of lung cancer kills 97% of patients within five years of diagnosis and is difficult to treat because of the way it can resist chemotherapy.
The research team discovered that one particular molecule, a member of the PI3K (phosphoinositide 3-kinase) family, may be crucial for the spread of the disease.
The molecule influences several growth factor signals which cause cancer cells to spread and divide.
The scientists found that in small lung cancer cells, compared to normal lung tissue, there was too much of the molecule.
Professor Michael Seckl, of Hammersmith Hospital, who led the research, said: "This is an important discovery that will help us in working towards a treatment that targets and destroys the molecule and in so doing stops cancer of the lung growing."
Small cell lung cancer spreads in response to many growth factors.
This means that targeting individual growth factors is unlikely to be successful as other growth factors can simply take over.
"However identifying a common single molecule - within each cancer cell - which allows the different growth factors to work in this way is an important step forwards," Professor Seckl said.
"Small cell lung cancer kills 97% of patients within five years of diagnosis and we are desperate to identify new therapies.
"Discovering what this molecule does is a major step towards developing treatment that targets it directly and may help future generations of patients."
The study, partly funded by Cancer Research UK, is published today in the EMBO Journal, which is produced by the European Molecular Biology Organisation.
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