Lung cancer claims more lives every year than breast, prostate and colon cancer combined. And the rate people are being diagnosed with this disease is growing rapidly — particularly among non-smoking and post-menopausal women.
Lung cancer is most successfully treated when it’s diagnosed early. That’s why City of Hope researchers are committed to quickly and safely developing better methods of early detection.
Kemp Kernstine, M.D., Ph.D., director of City of Hope’s lung cancer and thoracic oncology program, along with researcher Gerd Pfeifer, Ph.D., and their teams have created a way to identify genes associated with the development and spread of lung cancer. Known as MIRA, this City of Hope-developed technology may someday allow doctors to “turn off” those genes to slow or prevent cancer’s spread.
Meanwhile, Li Zhong, Ph.D., in the Department of Clinical and Molecular Pharmacology, is developing a test to help identify certain cancer-relevant antibodies in a patient’s blood. Early research suggests detecting these antibodies may reveal the presence of cancer as much as two to three years before a tumor can be detected via CT scan.
Not all research happens in the lab, though. Betty Ferrell, R.N., Ph.D., is investigating the mental and emotional barriers that keep lung cancer patients from managing pain and fatigue as well as they could. Her findings could have a big impact on patients’ quality of life.
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