ONCOGENIC ALTERATIONS IN PRIMARY HUMAN LUNG-TUMORS (REVIEW)

Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in Western count ries. For improved diagnosis and refined therapeutical approaches it i s of major importance to understand by what mechanisms carcinoma of th e lung develop. The analysis of primary lung cancer revealed specific chromosomal alterations and allelic losses of the short arm of chromos ome 3. Genetic aberrations have been observed in proto-oncogenes such as H-ras, K-ras, C-myc and raf-1 as well as in the tumor suppressor ge nes Rb and p53. Rearrangement of rlf and elevated expression in certai n lung tumors have also been reported. The development of lung cancer also involves the altered activation of genes coding for growth factor s such as TGF beta 2 and certain growth factor receptor genes such as c-erbB-2, HEK2 and FGFR-4.