Investigation of a mitochondria-associated metastasis regulatory mechanism

肺癌是美国与癌症相关的死亡的主要原因，超过15万人 美国人每年都死于肺癌。尽管我们的治疗是最好的，但是治愈肺癌的努力还是失败了。 大多数情况下，部分原因是对转移生物学的了解不足，这几乎不可避免地导致 导致肺癌死亡。因此，更好地了解调控转移的机制将使我们能够获得 对疾病基础的更深入的了解，在此基础上，治疗转移性肺癌的新治疗策略 可以被开发和测试。在我们初步研究的基础上，我们假设自噬相关基因 通过一种新的线粒体在肺癌转移调控中发挥关键作用 机制。这项提案的主要目标是确定是否操纵这一 基因或其线粒体相关功能可抑制肺癌的扩散。因此，我们的研究 不仅揭示了肺癌的新的基本发病机制，而且具有翻译的潜力。因为有很多 全球每年约有200万新肺癌病例(世界卫生组织统计)，我们的研究可能 对公众健康有重大影响。

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States, and more than 150,000 Americans die of lung cancer each year. Despite our best treatment, efforts to cure lung cancer have failed in most cases, partly due to an insufficient understanding of the biology of metastasis, which almost inevitably leads to lung cancer death. Therefore, understanding better the mechanism regulating metastasis will allow us to gain deeper insights into the disease basis, on which novel therapeutic strategies for treating metastatic lung cancer can be developed and tested. On the basis of our preliminary studies, we posit that an autophagy related gene plays a critical role in the regulation of lung cancer metastasis through a novel mitochondria associated mechanism. The primary objectives of this proposal are to determine whether manipulating the expression of this gene or its mitochondria associated function can inhibit the dissemination of lung cancer. As such, our studies not only reveal a new basic mechanism for lung cancer, but have translational potentials. Because there are about 2 million new lung cancer cases each year globally (World Health Organization statistics), our studies may have a major impact on public health.