Clinical use (translation to the clinic) of molecular information in lung cancer
| Issue | Potential approaches |
|---|---|
| Molecular epidemiology | Genetic stratification of lung cancer risk; integratation of this assessment into smoking cessation treatments, chemoprevention, and screening trials |
| Early detection | Detection of lung cancer specific genetic and epigenetic changes in sputum, blood, bronchial biopsies, brushings, and lavage specimens |
| Chemoprevention | Determination of the genetic and epigenetic abnormalities in specimens from bronchial epithelium to use as intermediate biomarkers for response to chemoprevention and smoking cessation |
| Diagnosis | Use of biomarkers as an adjunct to standard morphological and histological diagnosis and to assist in subtype differentiation |
| Treatment | Direct treatment at molecular targets abnormal in lung cancer but not in normal tissues. These include inhibitors of oncogenes, growth factors and their receptors such as tyrosine kinase inhibitors, farnesyltransferase inhibitors, cyclin dependent kinase inhibitors, cyclo-oxgenase inhibitors, antisense molecules, replacement gene therapy to correct tumour suppressor gene defects, apoptosis modulators, and inhibitors of angiogenesis and telomerase. |
| Prognosis | Use of molecular biomarkers to predict outcome including survival, metastatic potential, and probability of response to chemotherapy, radiotherapy or biological treatments |