According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), lung cancer is theleading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type of lung cancer, accounting for 85 percent of lung cancer diagnoses in the U.S.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) note that at present, existing treatments are unable to cure NSCLC in people who have received this diagnosis.

However, we may now be one step closer to finding more effective pathways toward treating NSCLC; a new study led by Dr. Anurag Singh - from the Boston University School of Medicine in Massachusetts - has found that one molecule indicates whether or not some of the more resilientcancer cells die following chemotherapy.

The researchers' findings were published in this month's issue of the journal Science Signaling.

mIR-124 is key to cancer cell signaling

In NSCLC, some epithelial cells - which form part of the lung tissue lining and normally align neatly with each other - transform into mesenchymal-like cells. Mesenchymal cells are non-aligning cells, which are able to "migrate." In the context of NSCLC, they have the potential to become cancerous cells, invading healthy tissue and forming tumors.

The mesenchymal-like cells that result from this "switch" exhibit mutations in the KRAS gene, which plays an important role in controlling cell division. KRAS is a proto-oncogene, meaning that it is susceptible to mutations that allow it to promote the development of cancer.

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