SNAI1 functional variant associated with decreased risk for lung cancer

This is an abstract from the January 15, 2014 issue of American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicino that I just re-discovered this week and relates to one of my ongoing (and unrequited) obsession with epithelial-mesenchymal transition in lung cancer.

It appears that there are five major EMT regulatory genes (SNAI1, SLUG, ZEB1, ZEB2, and TWIST1) involved in EMT.  But--the relative contribution and importance of each of these genes in the development and progression of non-small cell lung cancer is not clear.

 This article adds another layer of complexity and I post it (rather belatedly) now because I find in it such an intriguing finding that a variant protein could have functional consequences that are observable as a clinical outcome with regard to COPD and NSCLC.  Moreover, this variant was discovered to attenuate Snai1’s ability to specifically up-regulate mesenchymal biomarkers (i.e., fibronectin and vimentin) expression, and to promote EMT-like changes, including morphologic changes, cell migration, and invasion.