Final Activity Report Summary - LUNG CANCER UNDER 50 (Analysis of candidate genes for the susceptibility to lung cancer in patients under 50 years old) During the two year Marie Curie (MC) fellowship and the one year European reintegration grant (ERG) I learned: 1. how to make microarrays for genotyping human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) samples 2. how to perform case-control association studies. We studied the role of various genetic polymorphisms, in genes of xenobiotic metabolism, DNA repair and inflammation, in relation to gastroenterological and pulmonary cancers. We found that polymorphisms within inflammatory genes, e.g. IL6, affected the risk of colorectal cancer, whereas an interesting association between DNA repair genes and lung cancer in early-onset lung cancers was also observed. Moreover, several genetic risk factors were found among xenobiotic metabolism and lung cancer. The data pointed and stressed towards the role of inflammation for the colorectal cancer, whereas metabolism of xenobiotics, likely due to the inhaled cigarette smoke, and DNA repair played an important role in early-onset lung cancer. Finally, we studied the role of genetic variants within TP53 and found that Arg72Pro and, to a greater extent, a duplication of 16bp within the intron 3 of TP53, were related to lung and colorectal cancers, stressing further that genetic susceptibility could be related to genetic variations within p53.
