Gene variation may increase lung cancer risk for non‐smokers

Abstract

A recent study found that variations in the GPC5 gene may significantly increase the risk of developing lung cancer in patients who never smoked.1 The findings indicate the gene may be a target for both drug development and identifying those individuals at high risk for the disease. The study was led by Ping Yang, MD, of the department of health sciences research at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr.Yang and colleagues studied DNA samples from 754 never-smokers and analyzed 331,918 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP5) in 377 matched case-control pairs to find genetic variations that were most likely to alter the risk of lung cancer. They found 2 specific genetic markers that appeared to be significant. Further studies validated their findings. In addition, they found that the top 2 SNPs were associated with lung cancer in never-smokers through their regulation of GPC5 expression. Additional studies demonstrated that GPC5 expression levels were 50% lower in adenocarcinoma than in matched normal lung tissue, which indicated that reduced GPC5 expression could be specific for adenocarcinoma in never-smokers. Researchers must develop more studies to determine the regulatory effects of the SNPs and the possible role of GPC5 in the development of lung cancer, the research team concluded.