A Bermudian doctor has made a breakthrough in treating lung cancer, which kills almost 160,000 people each year.

Dr. Malcolm Brock and a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Centre spent five years examining tissue to find DNA markers that identify cancer cells that are likely to return.

This research, which will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine today, will help doctors to be more aggressive in treating patients who have a chance of recurring cancer.

Even the smallest lung cancers — the size of a pea — could be treated differently, because physicians recognise that this cancer can recur within five years for between 30 to 40 percent of the patients.

That is because even after invasive surgery appears to have removed all semblance of the cancer, DNA markers are left behind which will allow the cancer to regrow.

Now, armed with evidence provided by Dr. Brock who was raised in Cox's Hill, Pembroke, these patients might have a fighting chance.

And that's what Dr. Brock hopes to do as his research moves doctors from microscopes to DNA and forensic investigations.

"How is that possible if you get it (cancer) all," he asked rhetorically. "The microscope is a 17th Century instrument and it was devised way back then and we are still using it.

"We were trying to find a way that it could be possible that we could use DNA (to find cancer remains) the way microscopes couldn't.

"We thought we could use it (DNA) because it tells a story and we can tell which patients cancer will occur and reoccur."

The molecular flags, that Dr. Brock and his team isolated were chemicals that are part of a methyl group. Latching onto the DNA structure of a gene, they tell cells which genes to turn off or on.

When they disrupt these signals it can cause a cascade of abnormal proteins that lead to cancer or its recurrence.

However, the scientific research, as with all studies, will have to be reviewed by independent researchers and steps will have to be taken to make it practical for clinical diagnosis.

The problem with transitioning this to everyday practices, according to Dr. Brock, is that their research was done using gels and for clinics it will have to be computerised.

But, Dr. Brock, who visited the Island in October to encourage other Bermudians to enter medicine, said he was confident this transition could be made, perhaps even to treat tumours in other cancers.

An associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Brock hails from a family of ground breakers. His father, Mansfield (Jimmy) Brock, was the first CEO of Bermuda College and his sister, Arlene Brock is Bermuda's first Ombudsman.

He earned his undergraduate degree at Princeton University; a Rhodes Scholarship for postgraduate oriental studies at Oxford University, in England; and a medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

After five years of research that led to this ground-breaking study, Dr. Brock said he is thrilled to be included in the esteemed New England Journal.

He said: "We are pleased the best clinical journal in the world thought this research was important. People are excited. People believe that this is something new."