Simple Blood Test Diagnoses Specific Lung Cancer Subtypes

Blood based novel diagnostic markers have been identified that can be useful in detecting lung cancer early and even contribute to their subtyping.

A novel reverse-transcriptomics strategy has been used to identify the biomarkers, which can then be used to diagnose non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLC), which cause 85% of cancer specific death worldwide, while the remaining are small-cell lung cancers (SCLC).

An international team of scientists led by those at the Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology (IIOAB; Nonakuri, West Bengal, India) examined frozen tissue samples from 30 squamous-cell carcinomas and 30 adenocarcinomas, both are a type of NSCLC. Ribonucleic acid (RNA) was extracted using the RNeasy kit (Qiagen; Venlo, the Netherlands). Five RNA pools from five adjacent normal lung tissues were also profiled for comparison purposes.

Blood samples from eight metastatic lung adenocarcinoma patients, eight metastatic squamous-cell lung carcinoma patients, and five healthy volunteers for controls, were used for the validation of a real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). The qPCR was carried out using SYBRGreen Master Mix (Applied Biosystems; South San Francisco, CA, USA) and Applied Biosystem's 7500 real-time PCR system.

Frozen NSCLC tissue-based microarray analysis revealed that E2F transcription factor 6 (E2F6), transcription factor Dp-1 (TFDP1), suppressor of variegation 3-9 homolog 1 (SUV39H1), and high mobility group AT-hook 1 (HMGA1) are significantly upregulated in both the adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma samples. However retinoblastoma-like 1 (RBL1), and heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein D (HNRPD) do not express in the blood of the patients having lung adenocarcinoma and/or squamous cell carcinoma subtypes of NSCLC.

The authors concluded that by using an integrated reverse-transcriptomics-based bioinformatics approach, they have identified key transcription factors that may be useful in developing subtype-specific biomarkers in lung cancer. The proposed seven markers also have high potential to be used in lung cancer diagnostics for NSCLC subtypes. Debmalya Barh, PhD, who led the study said, “The novel reverse-transcriptomics-based integrated approach developed in this work can be applicable to identify early biomarkers not only for the lung cancer, but can be applicable to other cancers and diseases too.” The study was published on October 25, 2013, in the journal BMC Genomics.

Related Links:
Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology 
Qiagen
Applied Biosystems