Oncologists may soon be able to test for unstable chromosomes to identify lung cancer patients with high risk of disease recurrence, British researchers reported last night.
The discovery is the first to emerge from a major lung cancer research project backed by Cancer Research UK.
The project, led by the Francis Crick Institute, London, UK, is the charity’s single biggest investment in studying the disease.
The researchers say they have successfully tracked this genetic diversity clinically, using circulating tumour DNA in the blood.
A preliminary study correctly identified more than 90% of patients destined to relapse from a group of 24. The testing was undertaken about a year before imaging confirmed relapse.
The findings were reported last night in Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study in the NEJM reported on a study of tumours from 100 patients with non-small cell lung cancer, showing that those with a high proportion of unstable chromosomes faces a four times increased risk of cancer return within two years.
Researcher Professor Charles Swanton said: "For the first time we’ve revealed new insights into how tumours evolve and evade treatment, a leading cause of cancer death.
“We believe that this invaluable data generated during TRACERx will be seized upon by research teams across the world, helping us to answer more questions about lung cancer biology. We’ve only scraped the surface in terms of what is possible by looking at tumour evolution in such detail.”
Dr Christopher Abbosh, who led the research on circulating DNA published in Nature, said: “In the future patients could be offered personalised treatments that target parts of the cancer responsible for relapse following surgery.
“Using circulating tumour DNA we can identify patients to treat even if they have no clinical signs of disease, and also monitor how well therapies are working."
Jamal-Hanjani, M., Wilson, G.A., McGranahan, N. et al. TRACERx – Tracking Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Evolution. NEJM 26 April 2017; doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1616288 [abstract]
Abbosh, C., Birkbak, N, J., Wilson, G, A. et al. Phylogenetic ctDNA analysis depicts early stage lung cancer evolution. Nature 26 April 2017; doi: 10.1038/nature22364
Leave a Reply