LungBlog

Thirty-two baseball caps, a dozen or so books and between 300 and 400 cards and e-mail wishes later, I’m learning to live with cancer

Mueller Industries (NYSE:MLI) Inc. said Friday its chief executive, William D. O’Hagan, has been diagnosed with lung cancer and will undergo treatment.

An EPA-funded study done in the 1970s by a Johns Hopkins scientist found lung cancer deaths more than three times the normal rate in the neighborhood around Swann Park. The deaths were linked to arsenic dust from the factory next to the park and from train cars carrying the carcinogen.

Individuals contemplating computed tomographic (CT) screening for lung cancer because they are concerned that they are at risk should talk to their physicians. In this discussion, information on the benefit of the screening for that particular person, based on their age and smoking history, needs to be available to the person and the consulting physician.

Forty-three Filipinos die of lung cancer everyday, making the disease the most prevalent of cancers in the country.

The Cancer Network (C-Network), an advocacy group which works in patrnership with the Philippine Cancer Society and the Department of Health, said more than 17,000 new cases are diagnosed every year.

Under a collection protocol approved by an Institutional Review Board, CRCCC  will collect and provide samples necessary for Biomoda’s commercialization program of its non-invasive sputum assay for the early detection of lung cancer. CRCCC is a leading medical research firm with products and services that support the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, diagnostic and genomics industries

A BRIDE-TO-BE has spoken of her determination to “beat the odds” and lung cancer, and make it to her wedding day.

 For every dollar available to lung cancer researchers in this country, (my) colleagues who study prostate cancer can divide up $6. The disparity is even greater for breast cancer, where $9 is spent by the government for every one spent on lung cancer research.

Yet, for the 20th consecutive year, more women will die of lung cancer this year than of breast cancer.

The disparity between funding and mortality is consistent with a lukewarm commitment from the scientific community to study lung cancer as well. The number of investigators studying rare cancers such as those derived from bone marrow far exceeds the number studying lung cancer. State governments also miss the boat on this issue, as many use their tobacco settlement money to balance their budgets — or worse — and not to address the tobacco-related illnesses this money was intended to combat.

Human Genome Sciences, Inc. today announced that HGS-ETR2 (lexatumumab) was safe and well tolerated in combination with four different standard chemotherapy regimens in a Phase 1b clinical trial in patients with a wide range of cancer types. Objective responses were reported for two patients, and stable disease was observed in 22 patients. The trial was the first reported human study of an antibody to TRAIL receptor 2 in combination with chemotherapy. The results were presented today at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in San Francisco.

Although it can cost more than $1 million to give a lung cancer patient an added year of life, overall survival from the disease hasn’t increased significantly, a new study finds.