Collins has a predisposition for type-2 diabetes, something he had never suspected. The lanky, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) discovered this through tests offered by Navigenics, 23andMe and DecodeMe — companies that charge customers a few hundred dollars for a peek at their genetic makeup.

“I signed up for all three because I wanted to see if they gave the same answer,” he said. “They all agreed my diabetes risk is higher.”

Armed with that information, he eventually lost 25 pounds. But as a rule, he doesn’t consider such tests especially useful — at least not yet. “Admittedly, right now your family history may be your best bet and it doesn’t cost anything,” he said.

And so it goes in the fledgling genome field.

Still, one in 10 people with lung cancer have no smoking history. The proportion is even higher — as many as one in five — among women. Scientists at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center are focused on understanding why. One possibility is that, although lung cancers in smokers and nonsmokers develop in the same place in the body, these may be entirely different diseases at the molecular level. Different genetic abnormalities may be driving them, and they may require different treatments targeting those abnormalities.

Twelve years ago in this space I wrote about my mom undergoing surgery for lung cancer.

I talked about her enduring nine weeks of chemotherapy before the surgery to remove a lobe of one lung. I also discussed the emotional turmoil the dreaded C-word diagnosis puts a family through and how I desperately hoped she could go home from Luther Hospital cancer-free.

HealthFirst reporter Leslie Toldo explains two new options for patients who were once not considered candidates for surgery.

A key reason this cancer is so deadly is a quarter of lung cancer patients are too sick, too old or too weak to survive surgery.

But that is changing.

It kills more people than any other cancer, and it takes more lives than breast, prostate and colon cancer combined. So how did these women go from hearing, “You have lung cancer,” to, “You’re cancer-free?”

“When you first hear, ‘you have cancer,’ you don’t expect to get over it like I did,” recalled Frances Nirich.

Nirich is one of about 55,000 people who are told they’re too sick, too old or too weak for surgery to remove the tumor. She enrolled in a study to see if the cyber-knife can help those who can’t go under a real knife.

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s David Carbone, M.D., Ph.D., has received the Dr. David Jablons “Asclepios” Award for his commitment to innovative research.

The award was presented during the Simply the Best Ever Dinner Gala by the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation.

Addario is a five-year lung cancer survivor and founder of the San Francisco-based nonprofit foundation, which is one of the nation’s largest philanthropies devoted exclusively to eradicating lung cancer.

With his trademark energy, candor, wit and hairdo, former ABC News White House Correspondent Sam Donaldson spoke to a packed house of fellow “cancer club” members and/or their loved ones at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network’s Star of Hope breakfast in Omaha on Tuesday.

Donaldson officially became a member of “the club” in 1995 after he noticed a lump in his groin. It was melanoma.

He told his cancer story with comedic random segues (or tangents) into politics, stories on his prior visits to Omaha, the fact that politics is all about “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine,” (whether we like it or not), that Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson (D) told Donaldson to “put in a good word for me” after Donaldson mentioned he was headed to Omaha, along with many jokes. (Yes, this is a major run-on sentence. This is “Sam-speak.”)

Lange Productions announces “Be a Survivor – Lung Cancer Treatment Guide.” The book’s uniqueness is the positive, upbeat, encouraging tone that motivates and empowers lung cancer patients and their loved ones. Until now, lung cancer patients were under-informed about their options, and under-motivated to seek out cures. Many struggle under the negative stigma that their disease was self-inflicted. Physicians may approach them with less optimism, citing poor survival rates, leaving patients uninformed, and under-encouraged.

Postoperative chemotherapy modestly improves the survival rate of patients suffering from non-small cell lung cancer, new research has found.

In the study, a research team led by Sarah Burdett of the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit in London reviewed nearly 50 randomized trials dating back to 1965, according to MedPage Today.

An analysis of 34 separate studies involving 8,447 patients found that the five-year survival rate of lung cancer patients who had surgery and chemotherapy was 64 percent, compared to just 60 percent for those who had surgery alone.

Chemotherapy improves survival for patients with operable non-small cell lung cancer, say researchers who reviewed nearly 50 studies.

The first meta-analysis of 34 studies involving almost 8,500 patients (and more than 3,300 deaths) showed that survival at five years was 64 percent for patients who had chemotherapy and surgery, and 60 percent for patients who had surgery alone.

The second meta-analysis of 13 studies with 2,660 patients (1,909 deaths) showed that survival at five years was 33 percent for patients who had surgery plus radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and 29 percent for patients who had surgery plus radiotherapy alone.

When Dr. Betty Ferrell got her Ph.D. in 1984, she already had 7 years of work as an oncology nurse behind her, and she had absorbed some clinic-tested insights. “Fatigue wastes time, and time is precious,” a patient once told her, and she came to realize that “fatigue is really the existential crisis of cancer.” Symptoms like fatigue, pain, and other inevitable side effects of cancer treatment were dominating the lives of her patients, but she often found that clinicians and researchers were reluctant to address or even acknowledge this fact.