Research advances in search for biomarkers that may predict lung cancer

Nov 19 2013

The professor of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry of the University of Valencia Carlos Camps has participated in a research that advances in the search for biomarkers that may predict lung cancer. The results of the study, conducted by the Centre for Applied Medical Research (CIMA) of the University of Navarra, were recently published in the "Journal of the National Cancer Institute".

One of the biggest challenges in oncological medicine is to detect lung cancer earlier enough to allow treatment because now the location of these tumours implies a metastasis in about 75% of cases.  

This research has confirmed that the presence of a protein called C4d "is associated with a mortality increase of people whose tumours contain it, and also the levels of this marker are reduced after surgical removal of the cancer", said Carlos Camps, also a researcher of the University General Hospital of Valencia Research Foundation. This protein "may be a biomarker for early detection and treatment of lung cancer because it would diagnose those people at increased risk for this disease, but no symptoms", adds the scientist Eloisa Jantus- Lewintre, co-author of the work and belonging to General Hospital Foundation.  

To reach these conclusions, the researchers analysed samples from over 300 patients with lung cancer and 400 healthy people or with non-malignant respiratory diseases. The goal of this work is to achieve "the widespread use of biomarkers since they can be used to identify the population at increased risk for lung cancer, - the leading cause of cancer death in the world-, to confirm the presence of tumour cells or have more information about the prognosis for personalised treatments", explains Carlos Camps .

The line of research led by Professor Carlos Camps is based on the identification of new biomarkers in lung cancer, putting special emphasis on those ones that regulate angiogenesis processes (generation of new blood vessels in tumours) and tumour immunology. His group works in this field for almost a decade with major international publications, receiving continuously competitive funding of public agencies al national and community level. He is part of the Spanish Group for Lung Cancer, a cooperative group interested in the development of personalized medicine in this type of tumours. In his career he has established collaborations with other international groups such as the ETOP (European Thoracic Oncology Platform), with the one led by Trever Bivoca, professor at the University of California-San Francisco and the group of Professor Federico Innocenti at the University of North Carolina, among others.