Molecular pathogenesis and its therapeutic modalities of lung cancer metastasis to bone.

Bone metastasis is a critical problem of lung cancer patients. Reproducible animal models of lung cancer bone metastasis, like NK-cell depleted SCID mouse model with SCB-5 cells, are useful to explore the molecular mechanism and search of molecular targets. SBC-5 cells overexpressed PTHrP and that treatment with anti-PTHrP neutralizing antibody inhibited the production of bone metastases of SBC-5 cells in the NK-cell depleted SCID mouse model, indicating the critical role of PTHrP in bone metastasis in this model. In addition, we demonstrated that several compounds, including bisphosphonates and reveromycin A, potentially suppress osteoclast-activity were beneficial for the treatments of bone metastasis. Multi-modality therapy may be necessary for further augmenting the therapeutic efficacy against lung cancer bone metastasis.