Lung cancer is a disease that affects people: family, friends, co-workers, neighbors. It's a disease that comes with in some stark figures about survival and research funding. But the numbers don't lie, and they also show the amazing strides being made against the disease: increasing survival rates, incredible strides in treatment options, and ever-growing ranks of researchers dedicating their professional careers to improving the odds for people living with lung cancer. Join us for this episode of Hope With Answers: Living With Lung Cancer, where we talk about hope, by the numbers. Guests: Kim Norris, Lung Cancer Foundation of America co-founder and president Dr. Jessica Donington, professor of surgery at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine Dr. Triparna Sen, an assistant attending at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Kellie Smith, PhD, assistant professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins Medicine Show Notes | Transcript BY THE NUMBERS: 20 The quickening pace of research the last 20 years Twenty years ago, the lung cancer treatments available were surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Then came the discovery of treatable lung cancer biomarkers. The discovery that each lung cancer tumor is unique opened up a whole new world of discovery. After that, immunotherapy opened up even more ways to treat different types of lung cancer. And for many people, living with lung cancer it has become more like managing a chronic disease rather than the usually fatal diagnosis it was just a handful of years ago. “... the entire landscape has changed for people diagnosed with lung cancer. I even wonder if my husband, who died 20 years ago, would still be alive if he had been able to take advantage of all the research that’s been happening in just the past five or ten years. We now know people living 8, 13, 15, and 19 years after diagnosis. And then we realized that these numbers are really powerful-- they’re not just black and white numbers, they’re people.“ - Kim Norris BY THE NUMBERS: Double Duty LCFA Young Investigator Research Grants do double duty in the field of lung cancer research. Funding from foundations like the Lung Cancer Foundation of America is essential in building a pool of investigators. It takes a long time and a lot of money to go from a great idea and a bright star with a great mind to an NIH-funded investigator. But as Dr. Triparna Sen points out, these grants also help to train young investigators. “Like with this funding, we get postdocs and trainees and technicians into the lab. So we are essentially training the next generation of cancer investigators who will go on to become in independent investigators themselves. So you're not only just providing resource to advanced research, but you're also providing resource to train the next generation of cancer investigators. And I think that has a much more long term impact the next clinical trial. So I think overall, uh, the funding that I got from LCFA has been absolutely critical in developing me as a researcher. So thank you so much.” BY THE NUMBERS: 17 LCFA has invested in 17 grants so far, and 10 of them have gone to women. Women in science face many challenges. When Dr. Donington got into lung cancer 15 years ago, it was a very male-dominated field in terms of the doctors who treated it and the researchers who performed the research. And I always believe that a group of physicians and researchers that matches their patients provides the best care. The Power Of The Patient Advocate Voice Women advocates are making a difference in lung cancer research as well. As Dr. Donington discusses, “Lung cancer for a long time has had a stigma issue as being seen as a male disease, with people who have smoked for 100 years. And it's just not, it's not that disease. And I think that our advocates which are very heavily female like a lot of cancer advocates are, have really done so much to change the face of lung cancer…. I think they do more to change lung cancer than even us as investigators.” Dr. Sen thinks that what the patient advocates do is they help bring system-wide issues to light that are required for clinical trial design for what is important for the actual patients who is the ultimate goal role for our researchers. And her goal is to work with patient advocates to make her scientific studies more relevant to the field, more timely, because she now understand by speaking to them the urgency of the situation, and so make it more timely. “And I think patient advocates play a very important role to help researchers learn like myself move discoveries towards clinical use, but do that in a more sort of not only timely fashion, but also help us design studies that are more relevant to clinical use.” - Dr. Triparna Sen In addition, patient advocates play an important role in bringing these disparities to light. Then these issues can be addressed by researchers and by clinicians and move them to ...
