Read time: 3 minutes. One of LUNGevity’s two flagship survivorship events, the International Lung Cancer Survivorship Conference (ILCSC), is being held virtually September 20 – 21, 2024. This is a free, online event that allows people with lung cancer and caregivers from around the world to join from the comfort of their own homes and hear from a star-studded lineup of lung cancer experts discussing the latest advances in research and treatment. You can register today for free, or view the conference agenda. Last year’s conference was one of our most successful events yet, with over 900

Read time: 2 minutes. Traditionally, people associate getting involved in lung cancer research with enrolling in a clinical trial. But most don’t realize they can also partner with researchers behind the scenes and get involved in designing clinical trials. In the first of a three-part series, Rising Tide Foundation for Clinical Cancer Research has partnered with LUNGevity to understand the role people with lung cancer can play in developing clinical trials. Through panelist presentations and discussions, this video focuses on patient-centric endpoints, showcases this collaboration from the

Read time: 8 minutes Thousands of oncologists, scientists, biotech and pharmaceutical representatives, patients, and advocates (including LUNGevity staff) met to discuss lifesaving cancer research at the  annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago from May 31 through June 4, 2024. The theme for this year’s conference, “The Art and Science of Cancer Care: From Comfort to Cure,” highlighted the importance of using both our creativity and our scientific prowess to increase access to treatment.   It’s a time when we’ve made and continue to make extraordinary

Read time: 2 minutes The question of whether lung cancer is hereditary is becoming increasingly important in the lung cancer community. While the average age of lung cancer diagnosis is approximately 70 years old, we are now seeing young adults in their 20s and 30s getting lung cancer. We currently suspect lung cancer in young adults may be caused by environmental factors (such as air pollution or chemical exposure), their genetic make-up, or some combination of these factors. We cannot say for certain if lung cancer is hereditary, but researchers are working to understand the causes of lung

Young adults (less than 50 years of age) are being diagnosed with lung cancer at increasing rates. They tend to be women of Hispanic or Asian descent and are typically diagnosed with advanced-stage lung cancer. Research is ongoing to help us develop effective options to treat these patients medically, but little is known about the effects of the diagnosis on their mental, social, and financial health or their family planning. To help us better understand the needs of this growing population, LUNGevity awarded one of its 2022 Health Equity and Inclusiveness Junior Investigator Awards to Narjust

Read time: 7 minutes It’s spring! The daffodils bloom, the days become longer, and I attend the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). For those of you who are new to this meeting, it is the largest gathering of laboratory scientists and clinicians in the world—coming together to discuss how to take science from the bench (laboratory) to patients and communities. This year’s meeting was held in sunny San Diego and brought together more than 23,000 attendees. Below I summarize key meeting highlights that are of interest to the lung cancer community. Lung Cancer

Read time: 4 minutes I just returned from the Cancer Grand Challenges Summit, held March 5–8, 2024 in London, England. Cancer Grand Challenges was launched in 2020 as a collaboration between Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the US, whereby they provide $25 million to international, multi-institutional teams working to address some of the most perplexing issues in the cancer field. I am LUNGevity’s representative on Team CANCAN, which is working to understand and treat cancer cachexia, the extreme loss of muscle and fat tissue (often called “wasting”) that often occurs in

Read Time: 5 minutes It’s a mystery that has been baffling researchers: Why do some people develop lung cancer in their 20s or 30s? While we used to think lung cancer was only caused by exposure to tobacco and environmental factors like radon, researchers are starting to learn that the development of lung cancer, particularly in younger adults, could have a hereditary component. LUNGevity partnered with the Lung Cancer Initiative, a leading nonprofit in North Carolina, to support research into this space by awarding one of our 2023 Career Development Awards to Jaclyn LoPiccolo, PhD, MD

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new treatment option for people diagnosed with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have EGFR exon 19 deletions or exon 21 L858R mutations. Prior to this approval, treatment with osimertinib alone was the gold-standard targeted therapy for this population. The recent approval offers another option to patients – the combination of osimertinib with chemotherapy. This FDA approval is based on the results of the FLAURA 2 phase III clinical trial, which demonstrated that the addition of chemotherapy to

Approximately 10%-15% of patients with non-small cell lung cancer have tumors with mutations in the EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) gene. EGFR mutations are known to drive cancer growth. Many patients living with EGFR-positive lung cancer benefit from targeted therapies called tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). TKIs, such as osimertinib, can help patients by specifically blocking the effect of these mutations and reducing tumor growth. However, TKI-treated tumors eventually develop drug resistance, evade treatment, and resume growth. To help address this increasing problem of drug