The lead singer of Juno award-winning group jacksoul has died after a seven month battle with lung cancer.

Haydain Neale, 39, passed away at Mount Sinai Hospital on Sunday surrounded by family and friends.

In a statement from his wife Michaela she says Haydain’s sense of humour and love of music was “ever-present” through the challenges.

Jacksoul frontman Haydain Neale was remembered as an “amazing individual” and a “joyful presence” as stunned colleagues learned of his death from cancer on Monday.

Neale, the frontman for the Juno Award-winning group, died Sunday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto at age 39, after a seven-month battle with lung cancer, the family said in a release Monday.

New research from the US adds weight to the growing body of evidence that opiate-based painkillers like morphine, which has been used to treat postoperative and chronic cancer pain for two hundred years, encourage cancer cells to grow and spread. If confirmed with clinical studies, these findings could change the type of anasthetics given to cancer patients during surgery and the type of painkillers they use afterwards.

Today, Lung Cancer Alliance-New York (LCA-NY) issued its 1st Report Card on Lung Cancer. This Report is an assessment of progress being made against lung cancer in the state of New York. LCA-NY is a chapter of Lung Cancer Alliance (LCA), the only national organization dedicated exclusively to patient support and advocacy for people living with or at risk for lung cancer.

Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer deaths both nationally and in New York. This year alone, 13,550 New Yorkers will be diagnosed and 8,780 will die from the disease — more than breast, prostate, and colon cancers combined.

In recognition of Lung Cancer Awareness Month, about 20 students attended the “Strike Out Lung Cancer” event Wednesday night in the Student Union.

Tracy Sestili, founder of the Beverly Fund Lung Cancer Foundation, said the purpose of the event was to draw attention to the often forgotten awareness month.

Till about three-and-a-half weeks ago, lung-cancer patient Ramphal Rana (56) could not breathe without the help of a ventilator.

Chemotherapy had reduced the normal 2-cm diameter of his windpipe to a mere three milimetre.

Laboratory tests suggest morphine could in fact encourage the spread of cancer, for which it is routinely prescribed to relieve pain from surgery and tumours.

US scientists say the opiate promotes the growth of new blood vessels which deliver tumours oxygen and nutrients.

Speaking at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Boston, they also claim to have found a drug which counters this effect.

Cancer Research UK said more tests were needed before any changes in treatment.

New recommendations on the use of chemotherapy to treat patients with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer ( NSCLC ) were issued today by the American Society of Clinical Oncology ( ASCO ).

It should be pretty obvious by now that smoking cigarettes is bad for your health. What’s not as obvious is that it might be bad for your Mac, too. According to The Consumerist, two different people got turned down for AppleCare maintenance because their Macs were used in a house with a smoker. Both people appealed their cases all the way up to Steve Jobs, and both of them lost.

Seven months after a doctor told her she had only six months to live, San Francisco Opera singer Zheng Cao is still going strong. She is fighting stage four lung cancer. She never smoked and there is no history of lung cancer in her family.

Her spirits are soaring these days because the grueling treatments she has been undergoing are working.

“The brain alone was 24 tumors,” said Cao. “I have tumors in my neck, bottom of my spine, and middle of my spine and then lymph nodes.”