Throwing new light on lung cancer pathogenesis: Updates on three recent topics

Lung cancers have become the leading cause of cancer deaths in Japan, claiming more than 55 000 lives annually. Unfortunately, substantial improvement in terms of cure rates has not been achieved over the last two decades, although during the same period of time in-depth basic knowledge of the molecular mechanisms, which underlies carcinogenesis and progression of this deadly group of neoplasms, has accumulated at an amazing pace. It has consequently become evident that they have many shared but also distinct features, when comparisons are made not only with other common epithelial cancers of adults, such as colon cancer, but also within the various histologic types of lung cancers themselves. This review article provides an up-date on cutting-edge research into the following three different topics, from which important new insights have been obtained. The first concerns genetic instability, especially chromosome instability, and checkpoint failure in lung cancers. Second, we deal with EGFR mutations, which shows revealing specificities in various aspects. Finally, advances in the expression profiling analysis of both transcriptomes and proteomes of lung cancers are summarized.