A team from the research center Applied Medicine (CIMA) of the University of Navarra has discovered the mechanism of lung cancer tumor cells to destroy bone. With this finding, published in the scientific journal Cancer Research, the researchers have identified the keys to stop this malignant progression in animal models.

Further research could lead to clinical trials for application in humans. According to statistics, around 30,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed annually in Spain. In 30-40% of patients, the tumor spreads to the bones. Bone metastasis is usually detected very late, often at the same time as the cancer is diagnosed. Lung cancer causes about 20,000 deaths annually in Spain.

A step towards the control of metastases

The researcher who has led the work is Dr. Fernando Lecanda, head of the laboratory of Adhesion and Metastasis at CIMA. He explains that patients with bone metastasis suffer from poorly treatable pain, fractures, immobility caused by spinal cord compression and other disorders.

For the time being, there are no effective pharmacological therapies for this process, which is currently irreversible. Dr. Lecanda considers that this work opens a field to design drugs capable of stopping the metastatic progression in which 4 genes are involved: PRKD3, MCAM, SUSD5 and TCF4.

The recently published research has involved scientists from two areas of the CIMA of the University of Navarra: Fernando Lecanda, Iker Antón, Ignacio García-Tuñón and Diego Luis-Ravelo, from Oncology; and Francisco Borrás and Javier Dotor, from Gene Therapy and Hepatology.

Also participating were Silvestre Vicent, researcher of CIMA who is doing a postdoctoral stay at Stanford University (USA), and Javier de las Rivas, director of group of Functional Genomics of research center of Cancer (CIC) of the University of Salamanca.