From Globe and Mail:
Lung cancer can lie dormant for more than 20 years before turning deadly, helping to explain why a disease that kills more than 1.5 million a year worldwide is so persistent and difficult to treat, scientists said on Thursday.
Two papers detailing the evolution of lung cancer reveal how after an initial disease-causing genetic fault – often due to smoking – tumour cells quietly develop numerous new mutations, making different parts of the same tumor genetically unique.
To get a clearer understanding of the disease, the two groups of British and American scientists looked at genetic variability in different regions of lung tumours removed during surgery and worked out how genetic faults had developed over time.
What they found was an extremely long latency period between early mutations and clinical symptoms, which finally appeared after new, additional faults triggered rapid disease growth.
The research was published in the journal Science.
Read the full news here.
No comments:
Post a Comment