Discovering New Cancer Treatments in “Dark Matter” of Human Genome; Disabling Certain Long Noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) with Anti-Sense Oligos (ASOs) Inhibits Cancer Cell Division in Tissue Culture

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Switzerland. Among the different types of cancers, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) kills the most patients and remains largely incurable. Unfortunately, even newly approved therapies can extend the life of patients only by a few months and only few survive the metastatic stage long-term. Thus, new treatments which attack the cancer in novel ways are sought. In a recently published (September 14, 2022) study in Cell Genomics, researchers of the University of Bern and the Insel Hospital determined new targets for drug development for this cancer type. The article is titled “Multi-Hallmark Long Noncoding RNA Maps Reveal Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Vulnerabilities.”