AUDIO JOURNAL OF ONCOLOGY—“PM 2.5” Evidence Links Particulate Air Pollution to Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Audio Journal of Oncology Podcast

PARIS, France—Particulate air pollution was identified as a key step in malignant transformation from benign DNA to non-small cell lung cancer according to a report delivered to the 2022 Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO).

Charles Swanton FRCP BSc PhD, Professor and Senior Group Leader of the Francis Crick Institute, Consultant Oncologist at University College London Hospital specializing in Thoracic Oncology and ESMO Scientific Co-Chair, told the Audio Journal of Oncology that prevention was better than cure wherever possible, and that the oncogenic mechanisms his group’s research had uncovered held important keys to reducing the cancer burden globally.

Swanton’s group had investigated the relationship between air pollution and lung cancer in never smokers. “We’ve tried to establish how air pollution causes lung cancer,” he told OT. “Through a series of steps involving animal models and human analyses we’ve found that air pollution results in the release of a cytokine called: interleukin 1-beta from epithelial cells in the lung, that generates and transforms cells with pre-existing mutations—that occur normally due to aging—into tumor cells.”

He discussed his findings during the ESMO congress in Paris with the Audio Journal of Oncology’s Peter Goodwin.