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“I must do all I can to raise awareness about lung cancer research and treatment – make it something we talk about around the dinner table – because I don’t want any other families to go through what we’ve been through.”
Those heartfelt words came from Chris Draft – former NFL linebacker and current lung cancer awareness advocate – after touring UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center in May. Draft lost his long-time love, wife Keasha (38), in December 2011, to stage 4 lung cancer. Keasha was a vibrant, young non-smoker who led a healthy, active lifestyle.
“She was so beautiful and strong,” recalled Draft as he posed for pictures – with Keasha displayed on his iPAD – at various locations throughout Moores Cancer Center. “We have to change the perception that lung cancer is a smoker’s disease and raise awareness as to how prevalent it is.”
UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center is one of more than 30 cancer centers Draft has toured, meeting with lung cancer specialists, including Scott Lippman, MD, Director of Moores Cancer Center.

“Translating lab discoveries of genetic tumor drivers to the clinic is changing cancer medicine,” explained Lippman. “Lung cancer is a great candidate for personalized medicine based on this translation. Early clinical trials based on this lab research can tell you very quickly if the lab data apply to selected tumors in human patients, sometimes within the first few patients. If you’re hitting the right molecular pathway in the right patient, the cancer will be disabled and the patient will respond quickly.”
Draft and Lippman speak a similar language, the language of the competitor: know your enemy, exploit its weakness. In this case, the common enemy is lung cancer. Lippman, who took the reins at Moores Cancer Center in early May, led the Lung Cancer Program of the MD Anderson Cancer Center Support Grant and is editor-in-chief of the AACR journal Cancer Prevention Research. Draft recently founded the Chris Draft Family Foundation, dedicated to eradicating lung cancer. The two plan to meet again this weekend at the ASCO (American Society for Clinical Oncology) conference, to trade ideas and catch up with other industry insiders.
“Having access to a cancer center, such as Moores, in your own neighborhood is so important too,” said Draft. “The cost and difficulty of traveling, the anxiety involved, can be overwhelming. San Diegans are fortunate because Moores Cancer Center is here, right here. You’ve got what you need medically and you’re still surrounded by family, friends and the familiar.”
Lippman also believes that keeping open the channels of communication between comprehensive cancer centers (CCCs; there are 41, nation-wide as of Spring 2012), will help immensely. “Federal funding is tight everywhere. Translating and sharing on a national level, or linking the CCCs, will allow us to go farther, faster.”
For Draft, the end goal is straight forward. “I want to make lung cancer an issue that is so big, so talked about, that no one can ignore it.”
Respond and Donate

Adriene Kinnaird, MBA
Director, Oncology Services Georgia Cancer Center for Excellence at Grady
The care of cancer patients necessitates providing a wide array of modalities, all of which contribute to the overall treatment program. Cancer treatment has been perceived by many individuals to be made up of combinations of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. The term “advances in treatment” is most often used to signify new surgical techniques, new drugs or drug combinations and radiation treatments that enhance the duration of survival.
However, for many patients and their families, the price that is exacted in their battle against cancer is often much more than decreasing the duration of life. The struggle with cancer takes not only a physical toll but also a psychological
toll. The loss of control, the fatigue, the loss of body image, the loss of the will to live may be almost as detrimental as the disease itself.
At the Cancer Center, we have placed considerable emphasis on providing the most effective and most innovative treatments for patients with cancer.
Gathered under the auspices of the GCCE are a wide range of specialists in Medical Oncology, GYN/Oncol- ogy, Surgical and Radiation Oncology.
Cancer care for those at the Cancer Center is more than just treatment with a new technology or drugs. It begins with the potential to offer the patient the most appropriate therapy and is enhanced with the use of multi-disciplinary consultation and collaborative care.
We are placing needed emphasis on other areas that can dramatically influence a patient’s outcome. Education is a critical component of cancer treatment because an informed patient and family can more effectively make decisions relevant to the patient’s disease. Maintaining self-image is crucial to the mental well-being of the patients, and our image recovery program is integrated into the treatment planning for most patients. Our departments of social work, pathology, and rehabilitation are critical and integral to the treatment of the patient. They contribute as part of a multi-disciplinary team to enhance the lives of the patients who have entrusted their well-being to the staff at the GCCE.

Stephanie Grossman, M.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Medicine, Emory University
Director of Palliative Care at Emory University Hospital and Emory University Hospital Midtown
Dr. Grossman received her M.D. at Hahnemann University of Philadelphia and completed residency in Internal Medicine at University of California Irvine Medical Center. Dr. Grossman is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

Department Affiliation: Primary: Oncology;
Secondary: Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences;
Degree: M.D., Ph.D., New York University School of Medicine
Rank: Professor
Chair, Department of Oncology, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Director, The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins Bayview

The procedure is designed to tackle obstacles that stop white blood cells from fighting cancer cells. NBC’s Robert Bazell reports. We’re back with big health news out of this weekend’s meeting of more than 40,000 cancer doctors. Tonight, there’s a promising new study getting a lot of attention. Doctors hope it could lead to a new attack against some of the deadliest forms of cancer. We get more from our chief science correspondent, Robert Bazell
Reporter: it is a new approach using the body’s immune system to kill cancer. it helped David, a retired Baltimore policeman who had advanced lung cancer .
I was at basically looking at living month to month.
Reporter: scan shows tumor, seen here melting away over a period of months. Ken Kirkwood, who had advanced kidney cancer, saw similar results.
I couldn’t believe it, but in about four or five months or so, i was starting to see shrinkage in my limp nodes and my lungs and the area where the kidney had been removed.
Reporter: doctors also saw positive results with advanced melanoma.
There is a common denominator for many kinds of cancer. This is really unprecedented. There are so many exciting opportunities.
Reporter: the treatment is in its earliest phase.
Typically in a phase one trial, you don’t expect much, but we saw activity, so some tumor, completely shrinking away.
Reporter: here’s how it works. White blood cells, which kill bacteria and viruses, often try to kill cancer cells, but the cancer puts up a barrier. The treatment is designed to bring that barrier down. Tumors shrank in 18 to 28%, depending on the type of cancer. At this weekend’s conference, planning is underway for bigger trials, comparing and looking at side effects. For more than a century, scientists have been working to harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer. Only now is that starting to pay off.
I just wanted to live long enough for the cure and maybe i have. Maybe I’m part of it.
Reporter: while it’s not a cure, for many, it’s a hopeful beginning. Robert Bazell ,
Courtesy of NBC News, Chicago.

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Just m oments before a live report for the evening news, ABC 7′s Greta Kreuz got the call from her doctor.

“He said to me, ‘You have lung cancer.’ I said, ‘What?! I’ve never even smoked a day in my life!’,” Greta says.

But, on the cat-scan there was a half-inch tumor on her left lung.

Lung cancer kills more Americans than Colorectal cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer combined. This year, an estimated 160,340 Americans will die from the disease, making lung cancer the leading cause of death in America after heart disease.

And the five year survival rate is about 15 percent, as the symptoms usually don’t show up until it’s too late. Some of those symptoms include:

–coughing
–shortness of breath
–wheezing
–hoarseness
–coughing up blood
–fatigue
–chest, shoulder, back or arm pain
–pneumonia

Laurie Fenton Ambrose, president of the Lung Cancer Alliance, says,
“We are seeing more, and particularly women, being diagnosed with lung cancer, who have never smoked.”

The Lung Cancer Alliance says 80 percent of new lung cancer patients either quit smoking years ago or have ever smoked at all.

Greta wondered what caused her cancer. Her parents smoked, like so many in the 50s and 60s. So, was it second-hand smoke?

Or maybe genetics? Her sister died of the disease, but she had also been a smoker.

Other possible risk factors for lung cancer are: smoking (including cigarettes, cigars and pipes), radon and asbestos exposure, lung cancer in immediate family (regardless of whether they smoked), military/veterans exposed to Agent Orange and certain other chemicals, those with respiratory diseases; e.g., emphysema, COPD and tuberculosis and hormone replacement therapy.

“I wish I could tell you we had an answer. We don’t, because this is a disease that has been so stigmatized…and so underfunded,” Ambrose explains.

Last month, Greta underwent surgery at George Washington University Hospital. At stage 1, the cancer had not spread.

Surgeons removed Greta’s lower left lobe as a precaution.

Greta says her lung capacity is almost back to normal. And five weeks after surgery, she’s back at work. and definitely one of the lucky ones.

“You probably have an 80 percent, if not a little bit higher, chance of being cured from this,” thoracic surgeon Dr, Marc Margolis says to Greta.

“That’s pretty good! Very good. I like those odds!,” she responds.

Greta didn’t have to undergo any chemo or radiation, but she must have frequent C-T scans for the next five years.

A team of researchers led by Dr. Goutham Narla at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in collaboration with scientists at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, have discovered a previously unrecognized signaling network disrupted in lung cancer that can be turned back on by a novel combination of two previously approved FDA drugs. The drug combination targets a pathway to treat advanced/late stage lung cancer. The work highlights how understanding the basic mechanisms regulating cancer development and progression can lead to new uses for existing FDA approved drugs in the treatment of cancer.

“Because of the financial constraints and length of time it takes to bring new drugs through clinical trials, scientists are moving toward using existing drugs in new ways so that the process of translating the discoveries of today into the treatments of tomorrow can be accelerated,” said Goutham Narla, MD, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Medicine, Institute of Transformative Molecular Medicine, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Dr. Narla is also a medical geneticist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center.

“This ‘movement’ in science toward using existing FDA approved drugs for new purposes in the treatment of cancer has expanded our understanding of the pathways that cause the disease and significantly accelerates our ability to treat a greater number of patients. In many instances, every month makes a difference for a patient when dealing with terminal cancer,” said Dr. Narla.

Dr. Narla’s laboratory focuses on the identification and characterization of the genes and pathways involved in cancer metastasis. By studying the functional role of the KLF6 tumor suppressor gene, Dr. Narla and his team have identified new signaling pathways regulated by this gene family thus providing new insight into cancer diagnosis and treatment. The team’s research found that KLF6 and FOXO1, both tumor suppressor genes, are turned off as cancer spreads through the body. By using a combination of two existing FDA drugs — Erlotinib, a targeted cancer drug, and Trifluoperazine, a medication used to treat schizophrenia — the team developed an understanding of the properties that turn these critical genes back on, initiating tumor cells to die.

Since first discovering the KLF6 gene 13 years ago as a medical student at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in the laboratory of Dr. Scott Friedman, Dr. Narla has been involved in the identification and characterization of the KLF6 gene and its role in cancer development and the progression of cancer.

This study appears online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Additional support for Dr. Narla’s research comes from the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University Institute for Transformative Molecular Medicine, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Narla is also supported by an early physician scientist career award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

Recently, Dr. Narla has also been named the first Harrington Distinguished Scholar. This inaugural award provides physician-scientists who have potential breakthroughs with the ability to tap into grant funding, as well as a peer network of innovators and mentors within the University Hospitals Harrington Discovery Institute’s infrastructure to support their discovery efforts.

Dr. Narla is the principal investigator leading a multidisciplinary team with investigators at both the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine that includes Jaya Sangodkar, Neil S. Dhawan, Heather Melville, Varan J. Singh, Eric Yuan, Huma Rana, Sudeh Izadmehr, Caroline Farrington, Sahar Mahzar, Suzanna Katz, Tara Albano, Pearlann Arnovitz, Rachael Okrent, Michael Ohlmeyer, David Burstein, David Zhang, Katerina Politi and Analisa DiFeo.