Fifty-four (73%) of the 74 lesions of metaplasias and bronchiolar epithelia obtained from the IPF patients with lung carcinoma and 8 (17%) of the 46 samples obtained from the IPF patients without lung carcinoma showed LOH at the FHIT gene (P < 0.0001).
Our findings support the conclusion that FHIT/FRA3B abnormalities are associated with lung cancer pathogenesis but that FHIT abnormalities differ from the types of mutations and lack of wild-type transcript found in classic tumor suppressor genes, and functional studies are needed to define the role of FHIT in thoracic tumorigenesis.
We analyzed FHIT gene aberrations in 64 lung cancer tissues and found that the appearance of the aberrant FHIT transcripts depends on the condition of RT-PCR and high telomerase activity, shortened telomere length, and advanced pathological stage were likely associated with the prevalence of aberrant FHIT transcripts, but not with allelic loss of the FHIT gene.
These results indicate that the tumour suppressor properties of Fhit are strictly related to its expression level and show that the Fhit protein has a dose-dependent antiproliferative effect on the Fhit-negative Calu-1 lung cancer cell line.
To avoid overlooking tumor-specific altered transcripts due to contaminating normal cells in primary tumors, FHIT alterations were examined in 41 lung cancer cell lines in the present study.
Bronchoscopically obtained lung biopsies from 30 cases of histologically proven carcinoma of the lung in stage III were assessed for the alterations in the FHIT gene.
In this report, we describe an improved extruded DOTAP:cholesterol (DOTAP:Chol) cationic liposome that efficiently delivers therapeutic tumor suppressor genes p53 and FHIT, which are frequently altered in lung cancer, to localized human primary lung cancers and to experimental disseminated metastases.
The aim of this study was to identify FHIT gene alterations in bronchoscopy specimens of patients with suspected lung cancer and to determine the molecular relevance, if any, of FHIT alterations in the development of cancer.
Using the LightCycler RT-PCR assay, decreased FHIT gene expression might occur early and play an important role in lung tumorigenesis and also correlate with the prognosis of lung cancer.
We examined aberrant expression of the Fhit protein and allele loss at the FHIT gene in a series of lung cancer cases, mainly of non-small cell carcinoma (NSCLC) histology.
All of these findings are consistent with loss of Fhit protein expression being as frequent an abnormality in lung cancer pathogenesis as are p53 and p16 protein abnormalities and that such loss occurs independently of the commitment to the metastatic state and of most other molecular abnormalities.
The SVM and DT models for diagnosing lung cancer were successfully developed through the combined detection of p16, RASSF1A and FHIT promoter methylation and RTL, which provided useful tools for screening lung cancer.
Normal FHIT transcripts in renal cell cancer- and lung cancer-derived cell lines, including a cell line with a homozygous deletion in the FRA3B region.
Detecting FHIT deletions for lung cancer diagnosis produced 58% sensitivity in the enriched sputum, whereas there was 42% sensitivity in the unenriched samples (P = .02).
LOH of the FHIT locus was frequently found among the lesions of hyperplasia and atypical hyperplasia obtained from 6 patients with a 1- to 36-year history of PT (12 of 30 informative lesions, 40%); none of 70 hyperplastic lesions obtained from 14 patients with a 1- to 11-month history of PT showed LOH at the FHIT gene; 17 of 20 (85%) cancer lesions obtained from 20 lung cancer patients with a 2- to 53-year history of previous PT showed LOH at the FHIT gene, which was significantly higher than hyperplasia and atypical hyperplasia obtained from patients with a 1- to 36-year history of PT in FHIT LOH (Fisher's exact test p = 0.003).
These results suggest that the high methylation statuses of p16, RASSF1A, or FHIT genes were associated with a significantly increased risk of lung cancer; the risk of lung cancer increased as the methylation status increased.
Expression of these genes was evaluated by real-time polymerase chain reaction in 55 primary lung cancer samples characterized for FHIT and p53 expression by immunehistochemistry.