A new lung cancer test predicts the likelihood of death from lung cancer more accurately than conventional methods, according to two large studies by an international team led by scientists at UC San Francisco.

This test, which measures the activity of 14 genes in cancerous tissue, could more accurately guide treatment for people with the disease. Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in the United States and the world.

“It’s quite exciting,” said co-author Dr. David Jablons, who leads the Thoracic Oncology Program at UCSF, in a news release. “This has the potential to help hundreds of thousands of people every year survive longer.”

The two studies, the largest ever conducted on the molecular genetics of lung cancer, were published in the Jan. 27 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet.

Today, doctors assess early-stage lung cancers by their size, location and microscopic appearance. This information, known as staging, guides additional treatment following surgery.

If doctors could more precisely gauge prognosis, more people who might benefit from additional therapy could receive it immediately after surgery — before any residual cancer has a chance to grow.

One study analyzed tissue from 433 people in Northern California with early-stage lung cancer. The other study involved 1,006 people with early-stage lung cancer in China. in both trials, the team showed that the test could accurately predict whether the odds of death within five years of lung surgery were low, intermediate, or high.

More people die from lung cancer annually than from breast, colon and prostate cancers combined. It claims more than 150,000 American lives annually and accounts for some 1.4 million deaths around the world.

About 85 percent of Americans with lung cancer die within five years of diagnosis. Most cases result from exposure to cigarette smoke — but other causes include exposure to asbestos, chemicals, environmental factors and genetic susceptibility.

One of the challenges of treating the disease is that it is difficult to detect in its early stages, when it is most treatable, because it usually does not cause symptoms.

The prognostic test would address the inability to identify these patients, Jablons said. but even people whose cancer is detected at the earliest stages face serious odds.

Contact Lisa M. Krieger at 408-920-5565.

Hope for breakthrough lung cancer test

8:20am Thursday 10th March 2011

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SCIENTISTS in York are hoping to make a breakthrough in developing a non-invasive test for lung cancer.

Cizzle Biotech, a small company set up to further research into the disease, has received £300,000 from Yorkshire Cancer Research and the White Rose Technology Seedcorn Fund to continue its work.

The advances are a spin-off of research started by Dr Dawn Coverley at the University of York, on the Ciz1 b-variant gene, which it is hoped can be used to develop a simple blood test.

Doctors around the world would be able to use the test to improve predict drug response, monitor response to treatment and detect residual disease.

John Lucas, head of Cizzle, said: “The potential of our proposition to benefit cancer patients has increased dramatically with the discovery that the Ciz1 b-variant is prevalent in both small cell and non-small cell lung cancer plasma.

“We know that b-variant is easily detected in plasma from late stage lung cancer patients and absent from plasmas from healthy people, so a key goal now is to test whether Ciz1 b-variant is present in the blood of patients with early stage disease.

“In non-small cell lung cancer, for example, accurate staging is particularly important for decision making about surgery and chemotherapy, making a reliable biomarker such as this highly desirable.”

if Cizzle, which is based at York Science Park, can successfully develop an early stage, non-invasive lung cancer test, patients who have yet to display symptoms of lung cancer may be diagnosed and treated sooner, resulting in improved chances of recovery.

Morgan Williams, Yorkshire Cancer Research’s commercial development officer, said: “This latest investment is another example of that approach, where we financially support good projects that have real potential to fulfil a need, in this case in lung cancer.”

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