The Whittingham Cancer Center at Norwalk Hospital is pleased to usher in National Lung Cancer Month by being the first in the world to activate an important new study for patients affected by the disease.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Most patients with lung cancer are diagnosed when the disease has spread to other regions of the body, such as the bones, liver and brain, said Dr. Richard Frank, director of cancer research at Norwalk Hospital. This stage of the disease is referred to as “advanced” or “metastatic” lung cancer and is not curable by currently available methods of treatment, he explained.