Our results indicate that, in patients with lung cancer, genetic disposition with respect to the L-myc gene influences the extent of metastasis, the incidence of multiple cancers and prognosis.
Two abnormalities showed a significant correlation with clinical course: MYC gene amplification showed an inverse correlation with tumor recurrence (r = -0.44, p = 0.01), and a small increase in MYCL gene copies on chromosome I correlated with the presence of metastases (r = 0.61, p = 0.001).
In metastatic tumours, amplification of ERBB gene was detected in three metastatic tumours (9.4%), and all of them had allelic deletion of the LMYC gene.
These results indicate a clear genetic influence on metastases and a consequent poor prognosis for certain patients of lung cancer; L-MYC restriction length fragment polymorphism is thus shown to be a useful marker for predicting the metastatic potential of human lung cancer.
The restriction fragment length polymorphism of c-Ha-ras-1 and L-myc genes and expression of cell surface effector molecules were studied to determine their potential utility as markers for assessing risk of metastasis in 84 lung cancer patients.