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LUNGevity Foundation, the nation’s leading lung cancer-focused organization, announced the funding of two research teams that will focus on lung cancer interception: catching precancerous cells and blocking them from turning into cancer cells. These awards are the first-ever Stand Up To Cancer awards focused on the early detection and interception of lung cancer and build on LUNGevity’s eight-year direct investment in critical early detection lung cancer research. "Finding lung cancer early, when it is most treatable, is a critical step to saving thousands of lives," said Andrea Ferris, President and CEO of LUNGevity, "especially since currently only 15% of patients are diagnosed at this stage. Our long-term strategic focus and investment in finding better ways to detect, diagnose, and now intercept lung cancer in its earliest stages is strengthened by this collaboration with SU2C and the American Lung Association’s LUNG FORCE initiative. It is our goal to find noninvasive, widely available diagnostic and early detection tools that will dramatically change outcomes for people with lung cancer.” The interdisciplinary and multi-institutional awards include a Lung Cancer Interception Dream Team, and a Lung Cancer Interception Translational Research Team. SU2C-LUNGevity Foundation-American Lung Association Lung Cancer Interception Dream Team: Intercept Lung Cancer Through Immune, Imaging, & Molecular Evaluation (InTIME) Funding: $5 million Leader: Avrum Spira, MD, professor of medicine, pathology and bioinformatics, and director of the Cancer Center at Boston University-Boston Medical Center Co-leader: Steven Dubinett, MD, associate vice chancellor for research at UCLA and director of the lung cancer research program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center The Lung Cancer Interception Dream Team will develop diagnostic tools, such as nasal swabs, blood tests, and radiological imaging, to confirm whether lung abnormalities found on chest imaging are benign lung disease or lung cancer. To protect against recurrence of disease that has already been successfully treated, new blood tests will help identify patients at the earliest stages of recurrence, enabling timely interventions such as immunotherapy. "We plan to develop technology that can, in a very sensitive way, pick up the small amount of DNA that might be present in the blood of someone who’s harboring a lung cancer deep within their lung tissue – a noninvasive way of measuring a person’s risk of having lung cancer," Dr. Spira said. SU2C-LUNGevity Foundation-American Lung Association Lung Cancer Interception Translational Research Team: Blood-based Early Interception of Lung Cancer Funding: $2 million Leader: Lecia Sequist, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine, and director of the Center for Innovation in Early Cancer Detection (CIECD) at Massachusetts General Hospital Co-leader: Maximilian Diehn, MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiation oncology, Stanford University School of Medicine The Lung Cancer Interception Translational Research Team will develop a lung cancer interception assay (LCIA) that can be used in conjunction with low-dose CT scans, based on blood-based assays that examine circulating tumor cells and circulating tumor DNA. After completing pilot testing as part of this Translational Research Grant, the team plans to move the LCIA forward to larger, prospective clinical trials. "It’s extremely frustrating that we’re not technically able to find lung cancer earlier in the majority of patients,” Dr. Sequist said. “We need to change the paradigm that we use to identify patients so that they are found early enough to offer them curative treatment. If we really want to save more lives from lung cancer, we have to exponentially improve our diagnostics." LUNGevity is the only lung cancer nonprofit with a programmatic focus on funding early detection research, to find lung cancer when it is most treatable. Currently, only 15% of people with lung cancer are diagnosed in the earliest stages, resulting in a 5-year survival rate of only 17.7%. These projects expand on LUNGevity’s eight-year investment in early detection research with the goal of developing an effective, widely available, noninvasive way of finding lung cancer early in all populations. Click here to read the full press release.
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The other day, in conversation with a newly minted medical school graduate, he told me low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) was dangerous. Dangerous! If LDCT is dangerous, what is late discovery of lung cancer? He nearly fainted when I told him I had perhaps more than 40 CT scans in my treatment history, telling me I was a candidate for radiation induced cancer. It didn’t seem to register that I was a candidate for extinction by lung cancer. We are told the only effective way of treating our disease is early discovery. Few dispute this point. Why then would the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) want to reduce reimbursement for low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening by more than 40 percent? The Society of Thoracic Surgeons is concerned calling LDCT a “game changer in the battle against lung cancer.” Then I read: “Family physicians lack sufficient knowledge about recommendations for LDCT." Moreover, Doctors Patz and Chen, professors of radiology at Duke, say: “Not screening patients annually could save millions in health care costs and spare patients the radiation exposure and downstream effects of false positive screenings.” Something is very wrong. We have an effective tool for early discovery of life-threatening disease when not discovered early, and there is a campaign mounted against using it. CMS is a federal government-funded agency. In government programs there is a big difference between savings (cash you can put in the bank) and avoidance (cash spent elsewhere). CMS money is appropriated in broad categories. Once appropriated, fiscal managers move money around to address other needs or requirements. Appropriated federal funds are almost never returned to the Treasury. So the reduced funding for LDCT will be a bill payer for some other CMS program. No money is saved; it is spent on something else. Further, when making a valid cost avoidance argument, one must identify all cost. For example, the professors of radiology predicting savings for reduced screening do not identify the millions of dollars of increased cost for treating late-stage-diagnosed lung cancer. A cost avoided almost always results in cost added somewhere else, and without disclosing added burden, professionals are making very unprofessional arguments. Lastly, and most importantly, no one advocating reducing LDCT is considering the most important impact—suffering. There is a vast amount with late-stage diagnosis. Suffering affects more than the lung cancer survivor; it devastates families. While real and detrimental, suffering defies quantification in dollars. Several hundreds-of-thousands of us in the United States will suffer a late-stage lung cancer diagnosis this year. LDCT can eliminate some of this. In this light, it is hard to understand the assault against using LDCT to find, fix, and finish lung cancer! Stay the course.
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LUNGevity Foundation, the nation’s preeminent lung cancer research foundation, today announced that Alice T. Shaw, MD, PhD, has joined LUNGevity’s Scientific Advisory Board, a group of 20 world-renowned scientists and researchers that guides LUNGevity’s research program. The Scientific Advisory Board is integral to the Foundation, overseeing the scientific strategy and ensuring that grants are awarded to the researchers whose proposals demonstrate the greatest potential for finding lung cancer at its earliest, most treatable phase, as well as extending and improving lives of lung cancer survivors. LUNGevity is the only lung cancer organization with a programmatic focus on early detection and Career Development Awards. Our researchers are working on finding a better way to detect lung cancer, and to better diagnose, treat, and prevent its recurrence. The research program is a crucial factor in moving the science forward to improve outcomes for people living with lung cancer. Dr. Shaw is the Director of the Center for Thoracic Cancers and the Paula O’Keeffe Endowed Chair of Thoracic Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In addition to caring for patients with lung cancer, Dr. Shaw performs clinical and translational research. Her clinical research focuses on subsets of NSCLC that have unique driver mutations, such as EGFR, ALK, and ROS1. Her translational research focuses on understanding and making clear the mechanisms of resistance to targeted therapies; she is currently developing novel combination treatment strategies. Her research has helped to develop numerous FDA-approved targeted therapies for patients with oncogene-driven NSCLC, such as crizotinib (Xalkori®) for patients with ALK or ROS1 rearrangements. “We could not be happier that Dr. Shaw has joined our Scientific Advisory Board,” said Andrea Ferris, President and Chairman of LUNGevity Foundation. “She is a brilliant thinker, an innovator, and a compassionate advocate for her patients. In particular, her groundbreaking work that led to the development of Xalkori® has extended and improved the lives of many NSCLC patients. Her expertise and counsel will advance LUNGevity’s goal to increase and improve survivorship for those affected by lung cancer.” Read the full press release here.
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LUNGevity Announces Funding Opportunity for First-Ever Lung Cancer Early Detection and Interception Dream Team Call for ideas for SU2C-LUNGevity-American Lung Association collaboration FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Linda Wenger lwenger@lungevity.org (973) 449-3214 WASHINGTON, DC (February 6, 2017) – Building on the Foundation’s more than seven years of strategic investment in early detection research, LUNGevity Foundation, in collaboration with Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) and the American Lung Association (through its LUNG FORCE initiative), is pleased to announce that the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), SU2C’s scientific partner, has issued a Call for Ideas for research proposals that focus on lung cancer early detection and interception: catching precancerous cells and blocking them from turning into cancer cells. The interdisciplinary and multi-institutional SU2C-LUNGevity-American Lung Association Lung Cancer Interception Dream Team will be the first of its kind, with up to $7 million in funding support. As Dr. Pierre Massion, Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University, points out, "We understand the pathogenesis of lung cancer a lot better now. People have come to recognize that detecting the disease early and preventing it will require efforts between multiple disciplines to get there. The Lung Cancer Interception Dream Team is a huge step toward this goal." Dr. Massion is a member of LUNGevity’s distinguished Scientific Advisory Board and co-chairs the SU2C-LUNGevity-American Lung Association Joint Scientific Advisory Committee (JSAC). LUNGevity is the only lung cancer nonprofit with a programmatic focus on early detection, to find lung cancer when it is most treatable. Currently, only 15% of people with lung cancer are diagnosed in the earliest stages, resulting in a 5-year survival rate of only 17.7%. This project expands on LUNGevity’s investment in early detection research with the goal of developing an effective, widely available, noninvasive way of finding lung cancer early in all populations. Prioritized areas of interest for this project include research that accurately categorizes premalignant conditions according to risk of progression and that elucidates the underlying alterations that increase that risk; identification of new targets for developing therapeutic interventions of these early lesions; potential surrogate endpoints for clinical trials and regulatory approval; new tools for early detection and monitoring progression; the role of inflammation and immunosuppression in progression; or research targeted at generating sufficient knowledge to justify a clinical intervention to test novel hypotheses. Applicants for the grants are expected to show how their proposed projects will have positive benefit for patients in the near future, achieved through investigation by a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, synergistic Dream Team of expert investigators. Priority will be given to applications that are characterized by a diversity of team members, including those from fields outside the traditional realms of biomedical research (e.g., physics, mathematics, engineering, health policy, and communications). Specific aims of the project may include basic research, translational studies, and population studies, but the overall proposal must have a strong clinical research component. Program details can be found at https://proposalcentral.altum.com. Letters of Intent are due by March 8, 2017. Read the full press release on LUNGevity's website.
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LUNGevity Foundation Issues Request for Applications for 2017 Career Development Awards for Translational Research in Lung Cancer Application now available online FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Austin Courtney acourtney@susandavis.com (202) 414-0791 Washington, D.C. (January 17, 2017) — LUNGevity has issued a Request for Applications (RFA) for translational research for Career Development Awards that will be granted in 2017. The RFA is available on the LUNGevity website at www.LUNGevity.org/career-development-awards and is also posted on the proposalCENTRAL website at https://proposalcentral.altum.com. LUNGevity’s Career Development Awards for Translational Research program was created to support future research leaders who will keep the field of lung cancer research vibrant with new ideas. Successful applicants may receive $100,000 per year for a possible period of three years and will participate as non-voting members of LUNGevity’s Scientific Advisory Board for the duration of the award. Applicants must be within the first five years of their faculty appointment. The Career Development Awards are mentored awards, and a mentoring plan is part of the required submission. Projects that will be funded in 2017 are expected to have a direct impact on the early detection of lung cancer or on the outcomes of lung cancer, or to provide a clear conceptual or experimental foundation for the future development of methods for early detection and/or individualized treatment, including through targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Letters of intent must be submitted by Friday, February 20, 2017. LUNGevity supports the largest research awards program of any lung cancer-focused organization in the United States. Since 2002, LUNGevity has funded 118 projects at 58 institutions in 23 states. About Lung Cancer in the U.S. About 1 in 15 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer in their lifetime More than 224,000 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with lung cancer this year About 60%-65% of all new lung cancer diagnoses are among people who have never smoked or are former smokers Lung cancer takes more lives than the next four deadliest cancers (colorectal, pancreatic, breast, and prostate) combined Only 18% of all people diagnosed with lung cancer will survive 5 years or more, BUT if it’s caught before it spreads, the chance for 5-year survival improves dramatically About LUNGevity Foundation LUNGevity Foundation is firmly committed to making an immediate impact on increasing quality of life and survivorship of people with lung cancer by accelerating research into early detection and more effective treatments, as well as by providing community, support, and education for all those affected by the disease. Our vision is a world where no one dies of lung cancer. For more information about LUNGevity Foundation, please visit www.LUNGevity.org. Click here to read the full press release online.
