Five years update on relationships between malignant pleural mesothelioma and exposure to asbestos and other elongated mineral particles

ABSTRACT

Despite the reduction of global asbestos consumption and production due to the ban or restriction of asbestos uses in more than 50 countries since the 1970s, malignant mesothelioma remains a disease of concern. Asbestos is still used, imported, and exported in several countries, and the number of mesothelioma deaths may be expected to increase in the next decades in these countries. Asbestos exposure is the main risk factor for malignant pleural mesothelioma, but other types of exposures are linked to the occurrence of this type of cancer. Although recent treatments improve the quality of life of patients with mesothelioma, malignant pleural mesothelioma remains an aggressive disease. Recent treatments have not resulted in appreciable improvement in survival, and thus development of more efficient therapies is urgently needed. The development of novel therapeutic strategies is dependent on our level of knowledge of the physiopathological and molecular changes that mesothelial cells acquired during the neoplastic process. During the past 5 years, new findings have been published on the etiology, epidemiology, molecular changes, and innovative treatments of malignant pleural mesothelioma. This review aims to update the findings of recent investigations on etiology, epidemiology, and molecular changes with a focus on (1) attributable risk of asbestos exposure in men and women and (2) coexposure to other minerals and other elongated mineral particles or high aspect ratio nanoparticles. Recent data obtained on genomic and gene alterations, pathways deregulations, and predisposing factors are summarized.

Notes

^1. During the review process of the article, several relevant papers were published. Frequent SETDB1 mutations were found in MPM (Kang et al. 2016). Otherwise, the genetic landscape of MPM has been specified by reporting recurrent mutations, gene fusions, and splicing alterations in a large series of tumor samples (Bueno et al. 2016). A recent trial associating anti-VEGF and antifolate therapy increased by 3 mo the overall survival of patients with MPM (Zalcman et al. 2015). Concerning the effects of CNT, aberrant changes in mRNA and ncRNA (noncoding RNA) expression profiles in the blood of workers, exposed or not exposed to MWCNT, were reported by Shvedova et al. (2016).