Gene Chips Reveal Different Patterns Of Lymph Node Spread In Lung Cancer

Main Category: Lung Cancer
Also Included In: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 27 Jun 2007 - 1:00 PDT

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Jill Larsen (The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane, Australia) and her colleagues have used gene chips developed from the Human Genome Project to study lung cancers that directly invade neighbouring lymph glands compared with those that spread to these lymph glands via the lymph drainage system. Different expression patterns were found on the gene chips that could predict how lung cancer cells leave the main tumour growth and involve lymph glands, whose role is to slow down the progress of cancers and infections.

Lymph gland involvement generally means a more advanced cancer with a poorer prognosis, and this is one of the major factors which determine if a patient is offered chemotherapy after a lung cancer is surgically removed. However, lung cancers that directly invade draining lymph glands appear to behave differently than those which travel via the usual lymph channels. This difference is also observed in prognosis, where patients with the latter tumours have poorer survival compared with those who have tumours which invade glands directly.

Therefore, these results suggest that although these two types of lymph gland involvement are given the same classification, they demonstrate distinct behaviour differences.

If confirmed in prospective clinical trials, the pattern of lymph gland spread in a certain type of lung cancer may help doctors better determine the need for additional treatment after surgery to help improve outcomes from this devastating disease.

Title of the original article: "Gene expression of lung squamous cell carcinoma reflects mode of lymph node involvement"

The European Respiratory Journal is the peer-reviewed scientific publication of the European Respiratory Society (more than 8,000 specialists in lung diseases and respiratory medicine in Europe, the United States and Australia).

European Respiratory Journal

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