Skip to main content
An official website of the United States government
Email

Mobile DNA Elements Found to Drive Aggressive Lung Cancer

, by NIH Press Release

art showing a human lung made out of fingerprints with magnifying glass, which reveals DNA

NIH Press Release summarizes Sherlock-Lung study using large-scale, multi-omics analysis to identify biomarker of aggressive lung tumors.

Using lung cancer biospecimens from the Sherlock-Lung study, an international team led by investigators in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, identified key factors that drive tumor evolution and influence outcomes. Overall, the findings, published Dec. 10, 2025, in Nature, describe a previously unknown origin of some aggressive lung cancers.

From whole-genome sequencing of more than 1,000 lung cancer cases, the team focused on 542 lung adenocarcinomas with diverse clonal architectures. Among them was a collection of aggressive tumors enriched with the ID2 mutational signature, characterized by a single-base-pair deletion. Surprisingly, this signature was associated with a type of mobile DNA known as LINE-1 (L1), an ancient part of the human genome that has the potential to wreak havoc by inserting many copies of itself in different places across the genome. L1 is typically silenced in a normal cell but in these tumors was reactivated. L1 reactivation could explain the rapid evolution and aggressiveness of this subgroup.

Read more of the NIH Press Release.

Reference

Zhang T, et al. Uncovering the role of LINE-1 in the evolution of lung adenocarcinoma. Nature. 2025.

< Older Post

Alexander Keil Awarded Scientific Tenure by the NIH

If you would like to reproduce some or all of this content, see Reuse of NCI Information for guidance about copyright and permissions. In the case of permitted digital reproduction, please credit the National Cancer Institute as the source and link to the original NCI product using the original product's title; e.g., “Mobile DNA Elements Found to Drive Aggressive Lung Cancer was originally published by the National Cancer Institute.”

Email