LUNG CANCER
• Resources
• The Facts
• The Need
• Research Funding
• LCFA Awards
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Lung cancer is the forgotten cancer. It is under funded, under researched, and under supported. It will kill more than 160,000 Americans this year. The Lung Cancer Foundation of America is desperately needed...

"Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have."

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

"Dance like there's nobody watching. Love like you'll never get hurt. Sing like there's nobody listening.
Live like it's heaven on earth. And speak from the heart to be heard."

William W. Purkey

LCFA AWARDS

Because of all your generous donations, LCFA has accomplished a major milestone in the funding of two significant grants in lung cancer research. We partnered with the largest international clinical society focusing on lung cancer, the IASLC (International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer), in making these awards, with the IASLC contributing $25,000 as well as organizing and administering the peer review process, and LCFA contributing $139,000.

AWARDED GRANTS

DR. JESSICA DONNINGTON has been selected from more than a dozen international applicants to receive one of LCFA's first scientific research grants. In partnership with the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), the LCFA Lung Cancer Research Grant will award $125,000 to Dr. Donnington at New York University (NYU) for her research.

Dr .Donington, a native New Yorker trained at the University of Michigan and Rush Medical College in Chicago. She completed her General Surgery training at Georgetown University and was then trained in cardiothoracic surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota. After training she initially took a position in Thoracic Surgery at Stanford University, but in 2007 returned to New York to join the faculty of NYU in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery. At NYU she rejoined her long-time research mentor, Dr Harvey Pass, and she has been pursuing her desire to become an independent investigator in Thoracic Oncology. She currently splits her time between the Thoracic Surgery service at Bellevue Hospital and NYU's Thoracic Oncology Laboratory, which is also located in Bellevue Hospital. She has recently completed a Masters in Clinical and Translational Research at NYU.

Dr. Jessica Donnington's research involves investigations into the role of osteopontin in non-small cell lung cancer. Osteopontin is a multifunctional protein that works as a regulator of many different processes throughout the body. Its central functions are related in cell migration and cell invasion. It plays an important role in normal processes like wound healing and inflammation, but also participates in abnormal processes such as fibrosis and malignancy. It has long been associated with malignancy, but exactly how is unclear. Dr. Donnington and her team's investigations into osteopontin in non-small cell lung cancer are two pronged. First, they are looking to see if we can use osteopontin levels in the blood as a biomarker for lung cancer, similar to what PSA or CEA are for prostate cancer and colon cancer. The work is early, but promising, with higher osteopontin levels in lung cancer patients compared to healthy volunteers or high risk smoking populations, and they have noted a decrease in levels with treatment. Their second focus of investigation is into how osteopontin affects the malignant behavior of lung cancer cells and what makes it switch from encouraging healthy cell migration to encouraging abnormal cell migration associated with cancer. Humans make three different varieties (splice variants) of osteopontin, which are very similar. In Dr. Donnington and her team's early work, they have been able to show that one of the varieties is associated with the aggressive behavior of lung cancer cells while the other two appear to be uninvolved. This means that they might be able to target the single malignant culprit and leave the other two varieties to continue their important work throughout the body.

She states that this grant comes at an "incredibly important time in my career.  Without this type of foundation support specifically for young investigators in lung cancer research, the funding gap for this disease will continue, and it sustains my hopes to enable a lifelong career in lung cancer research."

She goes on to state how grass roots organizations such as the LCFA can change the course of a disease, as has been shown in breast cancer. "First, they raised awareness and removed stigma, then they raised money to support research, which dramatically improved survival. The same can and should happen in lung cancer, and this is an important step toward increasing the nationwide research interest in this far too common and deadly malignancy.

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DR. GOEFFREY LIU has also been selected from more than a dozen international applicants to receive the second of LCFA's first scientific research grants. In partnership with the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), the LCFA Lung Cancer Research Grant will award $30,000 to Dr. Goeffrey Liu for his study of the genetic differences in patients treated with anti-angiogenic agents to see if he can identify which patients benefit from this therapy.

Dr. Goeffrey Liu trained in medical oncology with a specialization in lung cancer at Dana Farber Cancer Institute (under Bruce Johnson), Massachusetts General Hospital (under Thomas Lynch, Jr.), and the Harvard School of Public Health (under Dr. David Christiani), and now is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, Canada. A molecular epidemiologist by training, he is active in both early detection and pharmacogenetic epidemiology – looking at the interaction of how inherited genetic differences in patients affects both response and toxicity from therapy.

His proposal is to work with Drs. Frances Shepherd and Ming Tsao to study genetic differences in patients treated with anti-angiogenic agents to see if he can identify which patients benefit from this therapy. It makes a lot of sense that it is inherited patient variability that governs much of the inter-individual differences in response to blood vessel-targeted therapies, as tumor infiltrating blood vessels are host-derived."  Over the next five years, he hopes to "complete the five ongoing pharmacogenetic analyses of Phase III lung cancer clinical trials, as well as to develop and grow a Toronto pharmacogenetic epidemiology training program. As a trained pharmacoepidemiologist, his perspective taken is often different from that a clinical trialist or clinician, and this can lead to the formulation of interesting, yet relevant, research questions.