Secrets of lung cancer spread found in patients’ blood and biopsies

Early signs that a patient's lung cancer may spread and become untreatable can be picked up in samples of their blood and tumour, according to a trio of papers co-led by UCL. The three studies, published , are all part of Cancer Research UK's £14million TRACERx project, which aims to understand how lung cancer cells change over time and become resistant to treatment. Together, the new findings provide clues as to which patients could be safely treated with milder therapies, such as surgery alone, and which may need additional treatments including chemotherapy. The discoveries could also help researchers develop new ways to treat the more aggressive forms of lung cancer. Around 47,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer in the UK each year and fewer than one in five survives for five years or more. Researchers believe a key reason why so few people survive lung cancer is that the tumour cells rapidly evolve, developing resistance to current treatments and evading the body's immune system. TRACERx, which involves over 750 patients from 13 UK hospitals, is examining how lung cancer cells evolve and spread via the blood, as well as how the body's immune system responds.