摘要: Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death in the western world, with approximately 3 million new cases per year world-wide, of which more than 200,000 are in the European Union. In men, mortality from lung cancer is much higher than from the second in rank, prostate cancer. In women, breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in many countries, but lung cancer also accounts for 10%. Cigarette smoking is responsible for approximately 90% of lung cancers. The association between smoking and lung cancer arose from epidemiological studies in the 1950s [1], but the direct link between tobacco smoke and lung cancer has been shown recently: metabolites of benzopyrene, a chemical component of tobacco smoke, damage three specific loci on the p53 suppressor gene, an abnormality present in 50% of nonsmall cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) and 70% of small cell