Lung cancer articles within Nature Medicine

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Engraftment of progenitor cells to effect repair of injured lungs has been a major challenge. A new study combines a conditioning strategy adopted from bone marrow transplantation with a lung injury model to bring this potential therapeutic approach closer to reality.

    • Hans-Willem Snoeck

  • News & Views |

    Two new studies demonstrate that so-called 'liquid biopsies' may reveal important genomic information needed to monitor treatment responses, forecast tumor recurrences, and provide a rationale for novel therapeutic strategies in patients with lung cancer and colon cancer.

    • Catherine B Meador
    •  & Christine M Lovly

  • Technical Report |

    Aaron Newman and his colleagues introduce a next-generation sequencing–based approach for the cost-effective detection and quantitation of tumor-derived circulating DNA in both early- and advanced-stage tumors and with high levels of sensitivity and specificity. CAPP-Seq (cancer personalized profiling by deep sequencing) can simultaneously detect multiple mutations and mutation types, including rearrangements. Here, utility is demonstrated for non–small-cell lung cancer.

    • Aaron M Newman
    • , Scott V Bratman
    •  & Maximilian Diehn

  • Review Article |

    Despite the initial promise of cancer therapies targeted against the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), tumors treated with these agents eventually develop resistance. In this Review, the authors outline the complex mechanisms by which tumors become resistant to EGFR-targeted drugs and antibodies and offer insights into new strategies that might be employed to circumvent therapeutic resistance.

    • Curtis R Chong
    •  & Pasi A Jänne

  • Brief Communication |

    The authors employ targeted next-generation sequencing to identify driving oncogenic alterations in patients with lung cancer with no known oncogenes. They discover two gene fusions involving NTRK1 that lead to constitutive activation of the kinase TRKA and can drive transformation. The fusions can be targeted with available kinase inhibitors and may represent therapeutic targets.

    • Aria Vaishnavi
    • , Marzia Capelletti
    •  & Robert C Doebele

  • News & Views |

    Kinase inhibitors are now standard treatment for patients with lung cancer whose tumors harbor specific mutant kinases. Four recent studies, including three in this issue (pages 375–384), have identified new fusion proteins involving another receptor tyrosine kinase that may potentially be responsive to existing targeted therapies.

    • William Pao
    •  & Katherine E Hutchinson

  • Brief Communication |

    Using high-coverage targeted next-generation sequencing, this report provides a catalog of genetic alterations in colorectal and lung cancers, identifying previously unknown alterations, such as JAK2 mutations and KIF5B-RET fusions, that may represent druggable targets.

    • Doron Lipson
    • , Marzia Capelletti
    •  & Philip J Stephens

  • Brief Communication |

    The authors report a new type of genetic alteration in lung adenocarcinoma. Fusions of KIF5B with RET kinase are found in 1–2% of lung cancer patients, segregate from other known alterations and can potentially be targeted using RET kinase inhibitors.

    • Takashi Kohno
    • , Hitoshi Ichikawa
    •  & Tatsuhiro Shibata

  • Brief Communication |

    Through an integrated screening system, the authors catalog ALK and ROS1 fusions in lung cancer and identify a new class of fusions involving KIF5B and RET that may represent new therapeutic targets in adenocarcinoma.

    • Kengo Takeuchi
    • , Manabu Soda
    •  & Yuichi Ishikawa

  • Article |

    The authors identify a set of microRNAs regulated by EGFR and MET that are involved in the oncogenic signaling exerted by these receptors and also modulate the response of tumors to targeted EGFR inhibition. These results shed light on the known contribution of MET to therapy resistance and suggest that MET-regulated microRNAs can be key mediators of its effects and potential markers of clinical utility.

    • Michela Garofalo
    • , Giulia Romano
    •  & Carlo M Croce

  • Letter |

    The authors find that cell-intrinsic activation of Hedgehog signaling without genetic alterations is a contributing feature to the progression and chemotherapy resistance of small-cell lung carcinoma, and that Hedgehog inhibition can prevent lung cancer growth and recurrence.

    • Kwon-Sik Park
    • , Luciano G Martelotto
    •  & Julien Sage

  • Article |

    This report identifies Cdk1's phosphorylation of BRCA1 as an important regulator of BRCA1's DNA repair function. Cdk1 inhibition renders cancer cells sensitive to PARP inhibition, and the combination treatment can inhibit tumor growth in vivo, expanding the potential application of PARP inhibitors beyond BRCA1-deficient tumors.

    • Neil Johnson
    • , Yu-Chen Li
    •  & Geoffrey I Shapiro

  • News & Views |

    Inflammatory cells can promote tumor cell proliferation, but the range of mechanisms has not been fully explored. A proteinase produced by neutrophils is now shown to enter tumor cells and promote their proliferation (pages 219–223).

    • Barbara Fingleton

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