Bioengineered organs, still largely the stuff of sci-fi, may have just moved a step closer to reality with reports that scientists have successfully implanted lab-made lung tissue into living rats.

The fully functional tissue can exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, the key role of the lungs.

The scientists–led by a team at Yale University–used a chemical treatment to remove all existing cells from adult rat lungs, keeping the structure of the airways and vascular system intact to later serve as a sort of “scaffold” for the growth of new lung cells.

They then cultured a combination of lung cells using a bioreactor designed to mimic the fetal lung environment and repopulated the “decellularized” rat lung with the engineered cells. When implanted into rats for short intervals of 45 to 120 minutes, the new tissue exchanged gas in a manner similar to that of natural lungs.

I am sure you never met her. Born in 1987, she lived all her life in California, completed high school and attended the University of California at Berkeley.

Jill was that very special type of young woman, She was truly beautiful, vibrant with life, the kind of person that everyone loved to be with and have as a friend. She had that inner beauty, active in campus activities.

She was the coxswain on the University women’s rowing team. She set the pace for the team, spirited them on to second place in the national collegiate rowing competition. She had a special love for the tiny dog, Jack, who seemed to be always at her side.

A year ago Jill was diagnosed wth lung cancer. She was young to have lung cancer, but anyone can have lung cancer. She never smoked, never was around people who did smoke. But then, 65 percent of those diagnosed with lung cancer don’t smoke. Lung cancer is a genetic disease.

Jill could not believe that the cancer that kills 160,000 men and women per year receives such little public attention.

She was shocked that the deadliest of all cancers received the least funding for research of any of the major cancers. She was determined upon graduation to dedicate herself to raising funding for lung cancer research.

Patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring susceptibility mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) did better with first-line gefitinib than with standard chemotherapy, in a randomized trial in Japan.

In fact, the researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine for June 24th, they stopped the trial early because progression-free survival, the primary end point, was significantly longer with gefitinib at the interim analysis.

Rates of 1-year progression-free survival were 42.1% and 3.2% with gefitinib and chemo, respectively. Corresponding rates at 2 years were 8.4% and 0%.

This is not the first time dramatic results with gefitinib in this setting have been reported. The New England Journal published a study last year, for example, with more than 1200 treatment-naïve advanced NSCLC patients. That cohort had 12-month rates of progression-free survival of 24.9% with gefitinib and 6.7% with carboplatin-paclitaxel.

Patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring susceptibility mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) did better with first-line gefitinib than with standard chemotherapy, in a randomized trial in Japan.

In fact, the researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine for June 24th, they stopped the trial early because progression-free survival, the primary end point, was significantly longer with gefitinib at the interim analysis.

Rates of 1-year progression-free survival were 42.1% and 3.2% with gefitinib and chemo, respectively. Corresponding rates at 2 years were 8.4% and 0%.

This is not the first time dramatic results with gefitinib in this setting have been reported. The New England Journal published a study last year, for example, with more than 1200 treatment-naïve advanced NSCLC patients. That cohort had 12-month rates of progression-free survival of 24.9% with gefitinib and 6.7% with carboplatin-paclitaxel.

Patients with a specific kind of lung cancer may benefit from a Phase III clinical trial offered by the Moores UCSD Cancer Center. The new drug, crizotinib, under development by Pfizer, showed dramatic results in reducing lung cancer tumors in some patients during Phase I and II clinical trials.

“The results of the first two trials have been very encouraging,” said Lyudmila Bazhenova, MD, assistant clinical professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a member of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center. “The Phase III clinical trials will be critical in determining if this drug goes to market.”

According to a preliminary study presented at the 2010 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Phase I/II clinical trials demonstrated that 57% of patients had their tumors reduced and at eight weeks of the treatment, 87% showed disease stabilization.

After the Mariners swept the Reds Sunday, Darrell “Doc” Rodgers wanted to talk about something else on his WLW-AM postgame show.Rodgers, 47, stunned the “Extra Innings” audience by announcing he has terminal stage 4 lung cancer.

“I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got something more important to talk about. This may be my last show,’ ” said Rodgers, a former Reds minor league pitcher and front office executive in his third season hosting the weekend post-game shows.

As I promised during my noon chat today on Cincinnati.com, I called Doc Rodgers and asked him about the stunning announcement he made on Father’s Day during “Extra Innings” after the Reds-Mariners: That he has terminal lung cancer. Here’s a link to my interview. I wasn’t listening to WLW-AM Sunday, because I was celebrating Father’s Day with my 94-year-old dad, sister, brother and my family. But when I talked to  Darrell “Doc” Rodgers today — his full-time job is a sales agent for Coldwell Banker West Shell in Wyoming — I remembered him complaining of nasty headaches on his show in early May. That was the start of all of this, he says. He asked listeners for their headache remedies that day. His doctor told him he had a “tension headache,” he said.

Ttwo weeks later, when he came home from WLW-AM on May 23, his left knee, foot and arm went numb. He thought he was having a stroke.  Emergency room doctors determined he had a brain tumor about the size of a quarter. In preparation for brain surgery on May 25, a full-body scan revealed that he had non-small cell lung cancer that had spread to his brain.

“I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I eat more salads than I do red meat. I don’t go to bars. I thought that’s the way you live,” Rodgers told me.

For J.K. Grant, participating in a test of a potential lung cancer vaccine is, as she puts it, her “civic duty.”

Grant was diagnosed with lung cancer last year, which resulted in surgery to remove tumors and parts of her right lung.

Shortly after, her physician asked if she would be willing to participate in a study testing whether a new vaccine is effective in preventing a recurrence of the most common type of lung cancer.

Grant didn’t hesitate. “No, not a bit,” said Grant, 65, of Everett. “It might help someone else.”

The vaccine is being tested at Providence Regional Cancer Partnership, one of 141 sites nationally and 400 sites across the world working on the study. A total of 2,270 patients are expected to participate.

Riverain Medical® announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted approval for the newest version of the OnGuard™ Chest X-ray Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) technology. OnGuard identifies solitary pulmonary nodules that may represent early-stage lung cancer on an existing chest X-ray (1). This improved performance demonstrates a 73% reduction in false positive marks and 50% higher relative sensitivity compared to the original product (2).

More than 200,000 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer this year. Only a small percentage of these patients will be diagnosed with lung cancer in the earliest stages when it is most treatable. When lung cancer is detected early, five-year survival rates triple (3). Multiple studies demonstrate that OnGuard can detect 37-50% of lung cancers that were missed in the initial interpretation (4),(5).

When John Updike died of lung cancer in January 2009, at 76, there seemed little left to learn about him. Not only was he among the most prolific writers of his time, but he was also among the most autobiographical, recasting the details of his life in an outpouring of fiction, poetry, essays and criticism that appeared with metronomic regularity in the pages of The New Yorker and in books published at a rate of almost one a year for more than half a century.