Cancer has become a normal occurrence in the world nowadays. And as unfortunate as it is, cancer can occur in different parts of the body. However, one in four cancers being diagnosed around the world involves the lung, and is still one the contributors when it comes to the most common cancer-related cause of death among Americans.

But scientists from Georgia Health Sciences University may change those odds as they have developed a way to reduce lung cancer cells' ability to repair its DNA break-down due to radiation therapy.

Radiation therapy essentially kills off the cancer cells, unfortunately even normal cells, by breaking down the double-strand of DNA. However, cells, including cancer cells, have an internal mechanism to prevent its DNA from breaking.

This is where the new research comes in. What the scientists did was to target the natural defense mechanism of the cancer cell by packaging a piece of an antibody against one of them with folate. Taking advantage of the folate receptors which scientists discovered cancer cells have a lot of, the antibody they call ScFv 18-2, can head straight for the cell nucleus where it can attack the enzyme essential for DNA repair.

With this method, Dr. William S. Dynan, biochemist, and one of the scientists responsible for the new approach, believes that patients can get the same amount of cancer cell death with less radiation or use the same amount and maybe cure a patient that could not be cured before.

Less radiation can be significantly beneficial for those who will receive treatment for lung cancer as it is used several times to treat cancer: before and after surgery, as primary treatment, and to manage the spread of the disease. But accompanying these current methods of radiation therapy are various side effects such as skin irritation, fatigue, difficulty swallowing, coughing, and cardiac toxicity, RadiologyInfo.org reported.

But for those who do not want to get radiation into their systems, people may opt for surgery as about one-third of lung cancer patients are diagnosed with localized disease that may be easily treated through surgery. Those with lung cancer can also consider lobectomy - which is the removal of an entire lobe of the lung - that has a very low mortality risk of only 3%.