Cancer biologists identify a driving force behind the spread of an aggressive type of lung cancer

A major challenge for cancer biologists is figuring out which among the hundreds of genetic mutations found in a cancer cell are most important for driving the cancer’s spread.

Using a new technique called whole-genome profiling, MIT scientists have now pinpointed a gene that appears to drive progression of small cell lung cancer, an aggressive form of lung cancer accounting for about 15 percent of lung cancer cases.

The gene, which the researchers found overexpressed in both mouse and human lung tumors, could lead to new drug targets, says Alison Dooley, a recent PhD recipient in the lab of Tyler Jacks, director of MIT’s David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Dooley is the lead author of a paper describing the finding in the July 15 issue of Genes and Development.