The sensitivity of bronchoscopy for detecting lung cancer ranges from 30% for small peripheral lesions to 80% for centrally located endobronchial lesions, necessitating further invasive diagnostic tests to try to establish the diagnosis. To address this diagnostic problem, the authors searched for profiles of gene expression in large airway epithelial cells knowing that cigarette smoke creates a field of injury in all airway epithelial cells exposed to it. In this study of …