SPH scientist awarded $3 million NCI grant for research to predict lung cancer risk

(Sept. 3, 2009) – University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center scientist Jian-Min Yuan, M.D., Ph.D., has been awarded a five-year grant of more than $3 million from the National Cancer Institute to continue research on tobacco byproducts expelled in the urine that can be used to predict risk of lung cancer.

This research may bring the development of a urine screening test to identify smokers who are at high risk for getting lung cancer another step closer to reality. The ultimate goal of such a screening test would be to predict risk in time to prevent the disease or to detect it earlier to more successfully treat it.

Yuan is a member of the Masonic Cancer Center’s Prevention and Etiology Research Program and an associate professor of epidemiology and community health with the University’s School of Public Health.

Lung cancer is leading cause of death in Minnesota

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in Minnesota, the United States, and the world. Each year more than one million people in world are diagnosed with lung cancer and almost as many die from it. In Minnesota, about 2,600 people each year are diagnosed with lung cancer and another 2,400 die from it.

Tobacco products are known to contain more than 60 different cancer-causing chemicals and cigarette smoking is recognized as the chief cause of approximately 90 percent of lung cancer. However, until recently, researchers and physicians have not been able to predict which smokers would get lung cancer and which would not.

Yuan's prior research linked tobacco byproducts
to increased cancer risk

That changed last spring when Yuan and his research colleagues reported finding that smokers with high levels of a tobacco byproduct called NNAL in their urine had double the risk of getting lung cancer compared with smokers with low levels. They further found that smokers with high levels of a nicotine byproduct called cotinine in their urine had three times the risk. Most significantly, smokers with high levels of both byproducts in their urine were 8.5 times more likely to develop lung cancer in their lifetime than those with low levels.

Yuan and his colleagues made this discovery by analyzing urine samples from about 500 smokers enrolled in the Shanghai Cohort Study and Singapore Chinese Health Study; the National Cancer Institute funds both of these study groups. The smokers were divided into three groups according to the levels of NNAL and cotinine in their urine and followed for 10 years.

With the newly received grant, Yuan and his research team will continue to assess these smokers by measuring the NNAL levels in their urine and dietary antioxidants in their blood.

Goal: ID smokers most at risk of cancer

“Our goal is to develop an effective set of non-invasive, predictive markers that can be used to accurately identify smokers who are at very high risk of developing lung cancer,” Yuan said. “All tobacco products are bad and there is no such thing as a safe cigarette. We hope that these predictive markers result in a screening test would be a loud wake-up call for smokers of their potential predicament.

“These people can then be closely followed for early detection of lung cancer and helped to change their lifestyle,” he added. “They also could possibly participate in clinical trials to test new chemopreventive drugs being developed in laboratories to protect against lung cancer development.”