Using an array of nanotube devices, each coated with a different organic material, researchers at the  have developed diagnostic system that may be able to diagnose lung cancer simply by sampling a patient’s breath. The results of this study, which was led by Hossam Haick, Ph.D., appear in the journal Nano Letters.

My family has been acutely aware of cancer since my wife was diagnosed with non-small-cell adenocarcinoma of the lung in fall 2000. She died after fighting the disease for 5 years 9 months and 23 days.

There is no cure for advanced lung cancer. The progress of the cancer may be interrupted occasionally, but the standard five-year survival rate is between 10 percent and 15 percent. The comprehensive numbers are somewhat less than that, as my wife would count as a survivor when she did not outlive the disease.

November is lung cancer awareness month, a time to take a closer look at the disease that kills more people than any other kind of cancer. Drugs currently available only extend survival by a few months. Now there’s a new weapon in the arsenal to help patients fight for survival.

Shares of drug developer AstraZeneca fell Wednesday after the company reported mixed study results from its developing lung cancer treatment Zactima and as it faces new generic competition to its asthma drug Pulmicort.

Chemotherapy-naive patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) along with epidermal growth factor receptor mutations of the tyrosine kinase domain have greater responses to gefitinib than those who have received chemotherapy, according to Taiwanese researchers.

November 20 marks the American Cancer Society’s 33rd Great American Smokeout, a day encouraging smokers to quit for at least one day in the hope that this might help them stop permanently. We shall also not forget that November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, a month dedicated to raising awareness on the most devastating side effect of smoking: lung cancer.

 Non-small-cell lung cancer patients on chemotherapy who undergo treatment with proton beam radiation appear to suffer less bone marrow toxicity than those treated with conventional radiation therapy, researchers said here.

Canadian scientists may have discovered a genetic trait that could provide an early indication of which former smokers will develop lung cancer.

The research, reported Tuesday at the American Association for Cancer Research conference in Washington, D.C., is still in the preliminary stages.

Still, “the benefit would hopefully be more targeted treatment,” said study author Emily A. Vucic, a graduate student at British Columbia Cancer Research Centre in Vancouver.

There were no differences in overall survival between non-small-cell lung cancer patients treated with erlotinib (Tarceva) alone or in combination with standard chemotherapy, researchers found.However, monotherapy with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor showed some benefit for progression-free survival among patients with tumors exhibiting an activating mutation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene, according to D. Ross Camidge, M.D., of the University of Colorado Health Science Center in Denver.

It’s three strikes for the oral multikinase inhibitor sorafenib (Nexavar) for treating advanced non-small-cell lung cancer in the ESCAPE trial.An updated analysis of the Evaluation of Sorafenib, Carboplatin and Paclitaxel Efficacy in NSCLC (ESCAPE) trial failed to show any advantage for sorafenib, researchers said at the Chicago Multidisciplinary Symposium on Thoracic Oncology.