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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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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.
