Peptide 'may prevent lung cancer'

As lung cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths in the entire world, largely due to factors such as smoking, experts are constantly on the lookout for therapies which may be able to prevent the development of the disease.

Now, specialists at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in the US believe that a peptide which is present in the body may be able to combat lung cancer.

The study, recently published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, shows that the peptide angiotensin-(1-7) restricts lung tumour growth by inhibiting blood vessel formation.

Scientists at the facility conducted tests on mice which suggest that that the substance may not only be able to stop the growth of the cancers in health insurance customers, but also shrink them.

Co-lead investigator Dr Patricia Gallagher, director of the Molecular Biology Core Laboratory in the Hypertension and Vascular Research Center at the School of Medicine, pointed out that somebody diagnosed with lung cancer today would have a 15 per cent chance of surviving five years, a statistics she described as "just devastating".

"Those other 85 per cent - they're not going to see their kids graduate. They're not going to see their children get married," she explained.

Gallagher's co-lead investigator Dr Ann Tallant, a professor in the Hypertension and Vascular Research Center at the establishment, said the new discovery may be particularly relevant, as lung cancer survival has hardly changed in the last 30 years.

Statistics from the Cancer Research UK showed that in 2006, around 39,000 people were diagnosed with lung cancer in the UK, or 107 people every day, making it the second most common form of the disease.

"Because it's a peptide, it's very small and can be made very easily. We sometimes like to say we're the aspirin of cancer therapy," the healthcare experts stated.

By James McCann

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