Study: lung cancer needs to be treated very early

A new study in the journal science has revealed that lung cancer can remain dormant for up to 20 years before it becomes aggressive.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The study shows that the genetic mutations which cause the cancer can go undetected before an outside stimuli causes the rapid growth of cancer cells.

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The researchers involved in the study hope that this new information will lead to earlier detection.

About two-thirds of patients who end up diagnosed with advanced forms of lung cancer are less likely to be successfully treated.

There are 40,000 people diagnosed with lung cancer each year, and less than a tenth of those diagnosed live more than five years.

"Survival from lung cancer remains devastatingly low with many new targeted treatments making a limited impact on the disease," said Professor Charles Swanton from Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute and the UCL Cancer Institute.

"By understanding how it develops we've opened up the disease's evolutionary rule book in the hope that we can start to predict its next steps."

The study looked at lung cancer in seven patients, including smokers and ex-smokers.

The study found that smoking can cause many of the early genetic faults to develop.  However, as the cancer grows, smoking becomes much less of a problem, and most mutations are controlled by a protein called APOBEC.

"This fascinating research highlights the need to find better ways to detect lung cancer earlier when it's still following just one evolutionary path," said Professor Nic Jones, the Cancer Research UK's chief scientist.

"If we can nip the disease in the bud and treat it before it has started traveling down different evolutionary routes we could make a real difference in helping more people survive the disease."

"Building on this work Cancer Research UK is funding a study called TRACERx which is studying 100s of patient's lung cancers as they evolve over time to find out exactly how lung cancers mutate, adapt and become resistant to treatments."

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