Editorial: Asbestos and disease genomics: is mesothelioma a genomic paradigm?

Our plain-English summary of Editorial: Asbestos and disease genomics: is mesothelioma a genomic paradigm?, by M.C. Jaurand, F. Murphy, E. Felley-Bosco (Frontiers in Toxicology, 2024).

The study

• Authors: M.C. Jaurand, F. Murphy, E. Felley-Bosco
• Journal: Frontiers in Toxicology
• Published: 2024;6:1536344
• Type of article: Editorial
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

In plain English

This article was an editorial, not an original study. It introduced a collection of papers (a "Research Topic") in Frontiers in Toxicology. The authors set out to question whether pleural mesothelioma is a "genomic disease," reviewing published research on how asbestos fibers cause disease and four papers in the collection. They described the fiber pathogenicity paradigm, which links a fiber's diameter, length and biopersistence, along with dose, to mesothelioma hazard. Summarizing others' work, they noted that pleural mesothelioma has a rather low number of gene mutations compared with other cancers and that NF2 gene changes appear to be a late event. From the collection, they described a genetically engineered mouse model in which asbestos sped the onset of mostly epithelioid tumors, and a mouse study testing 72 genetic backgrounds. The authors proposed that pleural mesothelioma appears as a "double paradigm," both toxicologic and genomic. They wrote that early imprints of asbestos were poorly identified, although studies of early effects had shown inflammatory pathway activation, apoptosis, and early genetic and epigenetic impacts. They added that the asbestos mechanism still needed to be distinguished from tumor progression.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Editorial with a narrative review of published research; no original data
• Who was studied: Not applicable: no people or animals were studied. The editorial reviewed published research on pleural mesothelioma, including four articles in the Research Topic (Leinardi et al.; Sekido and Sato; Farahmand et al.; Fisher et al.)
• Exposure: Asbestos fibers in general, discussed through the fiber pathogenicity paradigm, which links fiber diameter, length and biopersistence, along with dose, to mesothelioma hazard
• Main results:
  • Summarizing other studies, the editorial stated that pleural mesothelioma has a rather low number of somatic gene mutations compared with other cancers
  • The editorial stated that NF2 is frequently altered in pleural mesothelioma but that its alteration is a late event (reviewed by Sekido and Sato)
  • Describing Farahmand et al. in the collection: in a genetically engineered mouse model, asbestos exposure accelerated the onset of mostly epithelioid tumors
  • Describing Fisher et al. in the collection: in the Collaborative Cross MexTAg mouse model, 72 genetic backgrounds were tested, and genetic variants predictive of different disease latency were identified
  • The authors wrote that mesothelioma genomics had provided footprints on the link between established disease and asbestos, but that early imprints were poorly identified
  • The authors wrote that studies of the early effects of asbestos on mesothelial cells and pleura had shown activation of inflammatory pathways and apoptosis and had identified early genetic and epigenetic impacts at the onset of exposure
  • The authors wrote that progress must be made to distinguish the asbestos mechanism of action from the neoplastic progression of mesothelial cells
• The authors' conclusion: The authors proposed that pleural mesothelioma appears as a double paradigm: toxicologic, for approaches to further research on elongated mineral particles, and genomic, for asbestos diseases, because of some specific molecular changes

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Spatially resolved, high-dimensional transcriptomics sorts out the evolution of biphasic malignant pleural mesothelioma: new paradigms for immunotherapy — F. Torricelli, B. Donati, et al. (2023)
• Editorial: Epigenetic Modifications in Mesothelioma — Y.Y. Cheng, M.L. Yuen, et al. (2021)
• Editorial comment May cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), p21 and p27 expression affect prognosis and therapeutic strategy of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma? — I. Opitz (2010)
• Editorial: Exposure to asbestos dust — (1976)
• Editorial: Asbestos hazard — (1973)
• Syntenic relationships between genomic profiles of fiber-induced murine and human malignant mesothelioma — D. Jean, E. Thomas, et al. (2011)

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