Genomic study reveals more clues to lung cancer

A team led by researchers in Cambridge and Boston has more than doubled the number of genetic mutations implicated in the most common form of lung cancer.

The Tumor Sequencing Project decoded and sequenced 623 genes from 188 lung tumors in the largest genomic study to date of lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Writing in tomorrow's advance online edition of Nature, scientists from the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and other institutions report finding 26 frequently altered genes in lung cancer.

Some of the newly discovered genes and the molecular processes they are involved in are also known to be flawed in other cancers, the researcher say. The findings and the genomic study used to reach them should be applied to other cancers, the authors say.

The work "gives us hope that targeted therapies could be used across multiple cancer types," co-senior author Matthew Meyerson of the Broad, Dana-Farber, and Harvard Medical School said in a statement.