Identify the cells which, if damaged by smoking, start carcinoma lesions with squamous cell lungs. The challenge of early diagnosis.
The discovery of the cellular origin of one of the most common forms of lung cancer will help to refine early diagnosis and prevention of this disease, strongly associated with cigarette smoke.
In a study on Sciencea group of British scientists describes as a population of trachea cells It becomes dominant in response to the damage of smoking, ending up colonizing large portions of lungs. This passage is the basis of the precancerous lesions typical of Squamous cell lung cancerthe second most frequent subtype of lung cancer.
Intoxicated cells. Lung cancer is one of the first causes of death in industrialized countries, and the most common risk factor is cigarette smoke. Squamous or squamcellular cell lung cancer is a malignant neoplasm, which develops when the cells accumulate damage due to exposure to toxins. Often, these toxins are connected to the habit of smoking. Damaged cells disorganize and form precancerous lesions that degenerate into cancer. However, the transition between healthy cells and precancerous injuries was not yet completely clear.
In supernumero. The scientists of the University College London, the Wellthome Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge have discovered that a population of basal cells found in the trachea (the organ that connects the larynx to the bronchi) becomes dominant On the other types of cells in response to smoking and ends up occupying large areas of the lungs.
«We discovered that a subset of cells that express the KRT5 gene becomes dominant and begins to expel normal cells. The expansion becomes accentuated and in the end the descendants of a few cells originally from the trachea invade and conquer normal cells, in some cases arriving in popular whole lobes of the lung. These are these cells that in the end form tumors »explains Sam Janes, professor of respiratory medicine of University College London and the main author of the study.
Common ancestors. As a rule, when basal cells are divided, they give rise to new basal cells or luminal cells, which secreted for protective substances or help to expel inhaled foreign particles. A healthy coating of the streets are based on a good balance between the different cell populations.
The carcinogenic substances taken with cigarettes disturb these balances and make a small population of damaged basal cells predominant, which ends up colizing entire areas of the lung. Scientists have confirmed on the mice and humans that even distant precancerous injuries and in both lungs they descended from the same population of damaged basal cells.
Beat cancer on time. The hope is to be able to exploit the discovery to identify any alterations in basal cells before they form precancerous injuriesso as to identify these lung cancers in a more timely way and improve the prognosis. The development of drugs capable of steming these imbalances and proliferations could help prevent these forms of cancer in the future.
