] Lung cancer may be caused by a faulty repair mechanism
] triggered by smoking, according to a new study.
]
] US researchers have found that a primitive cell pathway,
] which is crucial for the development of lungs in the
] embryo, could be the major culprit in small cell lung
] cancer (SCLC).
]
] The pathway is found in all creatures, from worms to
] humans. It is called Sonic Hedgehog, after a mutant form
] in fruit fly embryos that leads to the sprouting of hairs
] all over their bodies.
]
] "The hypothesis was that smokers chronically injure their
] airways and pathways such as hedgehog get turned on to
] repair damage - but chronic injury results in persistent
] pathway activation, which leads to cancer," says Neil
] Watkins, team leader at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive
] Cancer Center, part of Johns Hopkins University in
] Maryland.
]
] The group's experiments showed that the Sonic Hedgehog
] pathway was indeed activated in half of 10 SCLC human
] tissue samples. Furthermore, they successfully stopped
] tumour growth in mice by blocking this pathway and
] believe this may lead to potential therapies in humans.

This article is particularily interesting to me for several reasons. One is that I am learning about this particular pathway in my Animal Development class (and learned a bit about it in other classes as well), so its just cool to see something in the news about it. Also, what makes this interesting is that lung cancer is the cancer that nobody has seemed to make much headway on in the way of cures...
At the end of this article, they talk about the cells differentiating into adult lung cells...and that means that this could be an important find for other areas of biology as well...such as organogenesis.

New Scientist - Faulty repairs blamed for lung cancer