Lung cancer image; Credit: Shutterstock

Smokers who have lung cancer suffer 10-times more genetic mutations in tumours than non-smokers with the disease, a new study shows.

The findings of the research, from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, USA, have just been published in the journal Cell.

Senior author Richard K. Wilson, PhD, who is director of The Genome Institute at Washington University, says, "None of us were surprised that the genomes of smokers had more mutations than the genomes of never-smokers with lung cancer. But it was surprising to see 10-fold more mutations. It does reinforce the old message - don't smoke."

The study identified around 3,700 mutations in 17 patients suffering from non-small cell lung cancer, which is the most common type. All but five of them were smokers.

In each non-smoker, the researchers discovered at least one mutated gene that is able to be treated with drugs currently available for other diseases or through clinical trials. In all patients, they found 54 mutated genes linked with existing drugs.

First author Ramaswamy Govindan, MD, an oncologist who treats patients at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University, says, "Whether these drugs will actually work in patients with these DNA alterations still needs to be studied.

"But papers like this open up the landscape to understand what's happening. Now we need to drill deeper and do studies to understand how these mutations cause and promote cancer, and how they can be targeted for therapy."

There are two types of lung cancer - small cell and non-small cell. Around 85% of all cases are non-small cell and they are split into three more classifications. This current study examined two of them - adenocarcinoma - that was linked to 16 patients and large-cell carcinoma that one patient had.

Ramaswamy Govindan, who is national co-chair of the lung cancer group, and Richard K Wilson also took part in a bigger genomic study of 178 patients with the third type, squamous cell carcinoma, which was recently detailed in the journal Nature and was part of The Cancer Genome Atlas project that aims to describe the genetics of common cancers.

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Lung cancer tumours in smokers have 10-times more genetic mutations

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