Gene variant linked with cancer, smoking

BALTIMORE, April 3 (UPI) -- A U.S.-British study has linked a gene variant with an increased risk of lung cancer, as well as increasing the likelihood that one will smoke.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, as part of the multi-institutional study, collected DNA from 1,154 smokers who have lung cancer and 1,137 smokers without lung cancer. Each DNA sample was analyzed for variations known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, between those with cancer and those without cancer. They then analyzed the top 10 SNPs in an additional 5,075 DNA samples from both groups.

Two of the 10 SNPs were consistently associated with lung cancer risk and both of them are located in chromosome 15 inside a region that contains genes for the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor alpha subunits 3 and 5, which already are suspected of playing a role in lung cancer progression.

The team also found the same two SNPs are associated with smoking behavior.

The research that included scientists from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the University of Cambridge in Britain appears in the journal Nature Genetics.