Recent evidence suggests that downregulation of gene of phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome 10 plays an important role in acquired resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitors in various types of cancers, including lung cancer.
We have developed a Drosophila lung cancer model by targeting Ras1(G12V)--alone or in combination with PTEN knockdown--to the Drosophila tracheal system.
To determine the role of the PTEN/MMAC1 gene in lung cancer, we screened 34 small cell lung cancer (SCLC) cell lines, 10 SCLC tumors, 13 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell lines and 10 NSCLC tumors using Denaturing HPLC (DHPLC) and direct sequencing methods.
Taken together, miR-10a targets PTEN to mediate the anti-tumor effect of icaritin in A549 cells, which provides a novel insight into the anti-tumor mechanism of icaritin and may provide a new strategy for lung cancer therapy.
Consistent with these findings, we observed increased PTEN phosphorylation and reduced nuclear PTEN levels in lung cancer patient samples establishing phosphorylation as a bona fide inactivation mechanism for PTEN in lung cancer.
Loss of PTEN function has been detected frequently in different forms of cancers, such as breast, prostate and lung cancer, gastric and colon cancer, skin cancer, as well as endometrial carcinoma.
Other driver biomarkers in lung cancer (point mutations and rearrangements in specific genes including Her2, BRAF, NUT, MET, ROS1, DDR2, FGFR1, KRAS, and PTEN) might potentially provide additional information for clinical decision making.