Breakthrough by Irish researchers in battle against lung cancer

IRISH SCIENTISTS have announced a breakthrough in lung cancer research which has been described as the potential to halt the progression of the disease.

The research, which is being carried out by St James’s Hospital and Trinity College Dublin and part-funded by the Irish Cancer Society, has focused on the role of the enzymes involved in blood clotting.

Blood clotting is 20 times more common in lung cancer patients and the research has focused on how enzyme levels, which play a role in blood clotting, are increased in lung cancer tissue.

Certain enzymes are known to break down normal cell tissue and help cancer cells to grow.

The enzyme being targeted in the research is called Thromboxane A synthase which helps lung cancer cells invade tissues through the barriers that hold cells together.

Prof Ken O’Byrne said the relationship between this particular enzyme and lung cancer had emerged as a result of analysis done on 650 samples collected from lung cancer patients at St James’s Hospital.

Studies were carried out in a laboratory at the hospital where researchers looked at cell-lines which had normal levels of the enzyme and some that over-expressed the enzyme.

“If you inhibit the enzyme, you may inhibit the cancer growth. Not only have we demonstrated that if we make cancer cells over-express these enzymes, they grow and spread, you can use medications to block their activity. In those situations, the cancer growth is stopped and the invasion is reduced,” he said.

Prof O’Byrne said the research was “very exciting” and part of several breakthroughs in the treatment of lung cancer, which remains stubbornly resistant to most forms of therapy and has the highest mortality rate of all the cancers.

At present, it is reported that only 12 per cent of lung cancer patients are alive five years after diagnosis although Prof O’Byrne believes this figure is closer to 5-10 per cent.

“It is an exciting area for the future and gives us a hint of how we might move forward in battling lung cancer,” he said.

“You may convert this aggressive disease into a less agressive disease over time and make it controllable,” he said. He predicted that outcomes for lung cancer would be much better within five to 10 years.

The researchers at St James’s Hospital are also involved in the clinical trial of a drug called Crizotinib which blocks an enzyme called anaplastic lymphoma kinase present in 5 per cent of lung cancer patients. It has been shown to shrink tumours by 70 per cent.