The AACR Dharma Master Jiantai Innovative Grant for Lung Cancer Research provides additional funding to an investigator for an existing project that develops and studies new ideas and approaches that have direct application and relevance to lung cancer. Following the Grant-in-Aid of Research model, this support supplements existing funding for an investigator conducting a basic or translational research project that will contribute to the acceleration of progress against lung cancer, for the ultimate goal of improving patient care.
2011 GRANTEE
Katrina A. Steiling, M.D., M.Sc.Assistant Professor of Medicine, Boston University Medical Campus, Boston, MA
Airway Genomics for the Early Detection of Lung Cancer
"Nearly 100 million current and former smokers are at increased risk for lung cancer, and 10-20 percent will ultimately develop this disease. While clinical risk factors can identify current and former smokers at highest risk for lung cancer, we lack sensitive and specific tests for diagnosing lung cancer at early stages where treatment is most successful. We have previously shown that the cells that line the airway are altered by smoking and that specific responses, as measured by the pattern of gene expression in these cells, are associated with and potentially precede the development of lung cancer. Cancer-specific differences in airway epithelial cells that can be readily collected as part of routine clinical care might, therefore, be able to serve as a sentinel for detecting tumors deeper in the lungs that might otherwise be invisible. To achieve this goal, it is important to have a more complete catalog of all the cancer-specific differences in these cells that could be the basis of diagnostic tests for lung cancer. The objective of this proposal, therefore, is to use new sequencing technology that is able to create a detailed profile of exactly what parts of the genome are being actively transcribed and how these transcripts are processed to perform a thorough search for cancer-associated differences in the transcriptome of airway epithelium."
Top of Page