Faculty Bibliography

The leading cause of lung cancer is exposure to cigarette smoke and other environmental pollutants, which include formaldehyde, acrolein, benzene, dioxin, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs and dioxins are exogenous ligands that directly bind to the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), a transcription factor that activates xenobiotic metabolism, histone modification (an important step in DNA methylation) and, ultimately, tumorigenesis. In this review article we summarize the current understanding of AhR and its role in the development of lung cancer, including its influence on cell proliferation, angiogenesis, inflammation, and apoptosis.

BAP1 is a deubiquitylase that is found associated with multiprotein complexes that regulate key cellular pathways, including the cell cycle, cellular differentiation, cell death, gluconeogenesis and the DNA damage response (DDR). Recent findings indicate that germline BAP1 mutations cause a novel cancer syndrome that is characterized, at least in the affected families that have been studied so far, by the onset at an early age of benign melanocytic skin tumours with mutated BAP1, and later in life by a high incidence of mesothelioma, uveal melanoma, cutaneous melanoma and possibly additional cancers.