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Cancer is overwhelmingly a disease of ageing. Oncogenic mutations accumulate in expanding clones throughout normal tissue over a lifetime, so by mid-life, much of our epithelium is a mosaic of mutant fields.
If initiation is near-ubiquitous, why do so few clones progress? This webcast will explore emerging evidence suggesting that a rate-limiting event is not initiation but promotion, and that the promoter is frequently inflammation, with myeloid programmes at its heart across the natural history of lung cancer.
This biology is captured by a 14-protein plasma signature, derived from UK Biobank proteomics and validated across eight global cohorts, that predicts incident lung cancer more than 5 years in advance of diagnosis. Applied to the Canakinumab Anti-inflammatory Thrombosis Outcome Study (CANTOS), this panel also identifies those who benefit from anti-IL-1ß prevention. Because CANTOS was a cardiovascular trial, the same IL-1ß axis links lung cancer and cardiovascular disease as shared pathologies of ageing.
A similar myeloid axis governs the later trajectory of disease. This phenomenon, termed tumour-infiltrating clonal haematopoiesis (TI-CH) connects the ageing haematopoietic system directly to cancer evolution and progression. Together, these data linking environmental exposures with age-related somatic mosaicism offer a tractable framework for molecular prevention, targeting nodal inflammatory axes driving both lung cancer and cardiovascular pathologies of ageing.
You will learn:
• Why do most oncogenic clones fail to progress to cancer?
• Can inflammation and circulating protein biomarkers identify — and potentially prevent — lung cancer years before diagnosis?
• How does ageing of the blood-forming system drive cancer progression?
Unable to join the live event? Watch on demand. Register now to ensure that you receive information on how to gain access after the live event.
This webcast has been produced by Olink, Part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, who retains sole responsibility for content. About this content.
Speaker
Charles Swanton, Clinical Director, Francis Crick Institute
Charles completed his MBPhD training in 1999 at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories and Cancer Research UK clinician scientist/medical oncology training in 2008. Charles is the Chief Investigator of the CRUK TRACERx clinical study to decipher lung cancer evolution and is co-director of the CRUK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence. He has published over 200 papers on work that has led to profound insights into genomic diversity within cancers (intratumour heterogeneity) and molecular mechanisms driving cancer-branched evolution. Charles has been awarded numerous prizes recognising his contributions to understanding tumour evolution and advancing translational cancer research. He is an editorial board member of Cell, Plos Medicine, Cancer Discovery and Annals of Oncology and an advisory board member for Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology and Cancer Cell.
Moderator
Alison Halliday, Freelance Science Writer
Alison Halliday, PhD, is a freelance science writer, focusing on life sciences, biomedicine and health stories. Following her doctorate at the University of Newcastle and postdoctoral research into human molecular genetics at University College London, she moved into science communications. With more than 25 years of experience spanning academia, industry and non-profit sectors – including a decade at Cancer Research UK – she has collaborated with Nature Research Custom Media since 2019.
