Dear Cori Fain

  You may trace the 2016 published articles, I think the most challenge research in Lung cancer,Best of luck

Pls. find the attached files

http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1002926

http://www.nature.com/onc/journal/v35/n28/full/onc2015429a.html

https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1479-5876-9-216

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jir/2016/7803091/

http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/72/3/604.full.html

https://breast-cancer-research.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13058-014-0488-5

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/842203

 AACR 2016: Abstracts 1-2696American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) CTI Meeting Technology, 2016

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304419X14000110

http://www.nature.com/mt/journal/v23/n5/full/mt201517a.html

http://www.cell.com/

http://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/abstract/S1535-6108(06)00181-4

Hoping this will be helpful

Regards

Prof. Houda Kawas

Hi Cori, take heart. Clinician and physician heads are also spinning in unison.

Most cancers do not have single causative agents (viruses, bacteria). Finding a common cause of cancers is a losing proposition.

Personally, I would recommend looking at immune cells surrounding the solid tumor. These cells are either killing the tumor cells or protecting them.   

I have been given previously embedded sections to do this with, so I just have to use what I have. I don't believe they included any surrounding tissues with the primary tumors. I can however, look at this in the lung sections. 

As Dr. Stefansson suggests, the surrounding immune cells in a solid tumor are extremely important. You should collect tissue from the margins to the tumor and evaluate what immune cells are sitting in both regions.  CD3+ CD8+, CD3+CD4+, Treg, MDSCs, neutrophils, and DC would be cells worthy of evaluating in your blocks.  I have not tried this myself, but Affymetrix has an in situ hybridization staining kit (ViewRNA:  http://media.affymetrix.com/support/viewrna/viewrnaishtissue/brochures/GCL05336-2_Brochure_ViewRNA-AskAffy.pdf) that could help you to identify each cell type in your tissue blocks.

Best wishes and I hope for your success!