LungBlog

Ask Kathryn Joosten about lung cancer. Go ahead. After all, the Emmy-nominated “Desperate Housewives” actress has survived it — twice.

“Lung cancer continues to be the least funded in dollars of the four major cancers,” Joosten said, “yet it takes more lives than all of them combined.” To battle that, Joosten and 8-year-old lung cancer survivor Gabby Wilson will be on the oceanfront in Santa Monica on Saturday morning leading a walk/run to benefit lung cancer research.

In our last “sound-off” day, I asked the following question: “What are the top lung cancer questions you would like to have answered by the foremost lung cancer thought-leaders, oncologists, scientists, researchers, etc.?”

Two leading lung cancer organizations unite to push for international efforts to eradicate lung cancer

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — For more than three years, the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (http://www.lungcancerfoundation.org) in San Francisco and the Joan Gaeta Lung Cancer Fund (formerly Foundation) in Atlanta, have worked tirelessly back and forth across the country in their efforts to eradicate lung cancer.

For more than three years, the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation in San Francisco and the Joan Gaeta Lung Cancer Fund (formerly Foundation) in Atlanta, have worked tirelessly back and forth across the country in their efforts to eradicate lung cancer.

Benjamin Franklin famously remarked that only two things are inevitable: death and taxes. In this era of superior diagnostics, timely treatment, miracle drugs, and breathtaking medical innovation, he might have been tempted to add a third item to the list — serious long-term illness.

Almost every family experiences one: the sort of reverie-piercing, life-rending health event or diagnosis that smacks you upside the head without warning, challenging your finances, belief system, priorities, and plans — frequently when you’re on the phone with your health insurer.

Jennifer Windrum’s video to President Obama asking for a “Beer Summit” – a beer and 15 minutes of his time to talk about the NEW lung cancer. The lung cancer that ANYONE can get. The lung cancer that is no longer a smoker’s disease. The lung cancer that is the #1 cancer killer and the least funded. The lung cancer her mom, Leslie Lehrman, has. No her mom never smoked. The lung cancer that took 22 year-old Jill Costello’s life last month. Jill was coxswain for Cal Women’s Crew and led her team to 2 national championships. The lung cancer Bonnie J Addario, a survivor, has prompted her to start the Bonnie J Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute, where research advances are taking place. Jennifer borrows Jill Costello’s motto of “Ask. Believe. Receive,” in her appeal to meet with the president, saying she she respectfully asks he meet with her, her mother and Bonnie J Addario for 15 minutes…

Yes, I am respectfully asking President Obama for a beer and 15 minutes of his time to talk about lung cancer – the NEW lung cancer – that ANYONE can get.

Please spread the word by posting this video to your personal Facebook profiles and sending to your friends.

Analyzing the genes expressed by cancer cells allows for a better understanding of that patient’s specific disease and in turn, a more personalized approach to treatment. But obtaining the RNA from a tumor in the lungs in order to conduct the genetic analysis is a challenging prospect. Currently, lung cancer researchers are limited to using RNA extracted from early-stage tumors removed during surgery. The small quantities of tissue extracted during routine diagnostic biopsies have not been useful to researchers, due to their small size and the variety of ways they have been processed.

Since oftentimes surgery is not an option in advanced lung cancer, genetic analysis of the tumor is critical, there is a need to obtain good quality RNA samples from tumor tissue taken via biopsy, no matter how the biopsy procedure is conducted.

To determine how arsenic increases the risk of lung cancer and to identify potential treatments, a Michigan State University researcher will use $1.7 million in federal funding during the next five years to examine why certain genes disrupt cells, leading to the disease.

Chengfeng Yang, a physiology assistant professor with the College of Veterinary Medicine and MSU’s Center for Integrative Toxicology, will be studying the role of very small ribonucleic acids called microRNAs. These microRNAs regulate genes, which control how a cell behaves.

The research project, which will study those processes in cultured human cells and mice, is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The blame that society puts on lung cancer patients could seriously impede attention and research funding on the disease, a local expert says.

“It gets 3 per cent of the total research funding for all cancers, and yet it is the No. 1 killer,” says Dr. James Gowing, a Flamborough doctor and cochair of the Cancer Advocacy Coalition of Canada (CACC).