LungBlog

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that is known for its durability and fire-resistant properties. The substance has been used in a wide variety of building materials, including insulation products, siding, cements, flooring and roofing to name a few.

When asbestos-containing materials become damaged or disturbed, toxic asbestos fibers can be released into the air. If these microscopic fibers are inhaled or ingested, there are several illnesses that may potentially develop, including lung cancer, asbestosis and mesothelioma. These illnesses have a latency period ranging from 10 to 50 years.

Patients with suspected lung cancer could in future be breathalysed to check if they have the disease.

Scientists have developed a sensor that can quickly detect lung cancer molecules on the breath. Early detection of the disease massively increases the chances of survival.

A new innovation developed by scientists in Israel may be able to detect traces of lung cancer in human breath, by identifying molecules linked to the condition. The device would be hand-held and easy to use, and could potentially be available at any family doctor or general practitioner’s office, in the future.

1.3 million people die of lung cancer every year, with 50% dying in the first year after diagnosis, and 80% within the first two years. It is notoriously difficult to detect while in early stages.

Lung cancer is a brutal disease, often not caught until it’s too late for treatment to do much good. Now researchers are building an electronic nose that could help physicians detect the disease during its initial stages. Using gold nanoparticles, scientists at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have created sensors with an unprecedented sensitivity for sniffing out compounds present in the breath of lung-cancer patients.

I recently returned from a seven-day conference of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer in San Francisco.

More than 6,000 scientists and clinicians from around the world attended this conference to share their studies. The knowledge that was shared at this conference holds much hope and promise for the treatment and survival of lung cancer patients.

At any stage, lung cancer is a potentially systemic disease. Stage IIIA (N2) disease typifies this assertion. However, it encompasses a complex area characterised by much confusion and controversy, because data derived from a particular historical subgroup of IIIA (N2) often are inappropriately applied to another current subgroup. The basics of its treatment include the need for chemotherapy, preceding or following an effective loco-regional treatment. The choice of the optimal loco-regional treatment, however, is all the more debated that the present systemic treatment is still poor.

Researchers at Wake Forest Univ. School of Medicine discovered a treatment effective in mice at blocking the growth and shrinking the size of lung cancer tumors, one of the leading causes of cancer death in the world.

A team of scientists at Oxford University announce the development of a better diagnostic test for asbestos related mesothelioma lung cancer. The asbestos testing study was recently published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

… When the senator’s daughter, Kara Kennedy, was told she had lung cancer in 2002, her father deployed a similar strategy, Clymer says. Doctors said Kara’s tumor was inoperable and the 42-year-old mother of two young children might have less than a year to live. But Sen. Edward Kennedy refused to accept that prognosis, and instead consulted with other experts and found a surgeon willing to operate…

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – In a paper appearing online today in the journal BMC Cancer, a British-led team of scientists showed that looking at the expression of a set of known or suspected drug response genes may offer clues for choosing the most promising non-small cell lung cancer treatments.