Via NIH Press - Government and private sector cancer scientists today launched a research partnership to find biomarkers for lung cancer that develops in people who have never smoked. The research studies are designed to create a better understanding of the biology of lung cancer and to develop a test to detect early-stage lung cancer in lifetime nonsmokers. The Canary Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds research in early cancer detection, and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, are sponsoring this multi-institutional effort. NCI's Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) and the Canary Foundation will provide initial funding of $1 million each.

Research has shown that lung cancer in people who have never smoked differs in many ways from the disease in smokers. For example, non-smokers with lung cancer have different tumor tissue structure, gene mutations, and demographic profiles than smokers with lung cancer.

"Efforts to study the disease in never-smokers have been limited, and no screening tests or approaches for identifying individuals at increased risk are available today," said Samir Hanash, M.D., Ph.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, and team leader for Canary Foundation-funded projects.

"This inability to recognize non-smokers who are at risk often leads to delays in diagnosis and results in cancer identification at an advanced stage, and this problem is what we’re tackling with this new study."Global estimates suggest that as many as 25 percent of all lung cancers worldwide — 15percent of those in men and 50 percent of those in women — are not attributableto smoking. "If you consider lung cancer in never smokers as a separatecategory, it ranks as the seventh most common cause of cancer deaths worldwide,even before cancers of the cervix, pancreas and prostate," commented Adi Gazdar,M.B.B.S., of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, andteam leader for the NCI-funded studies.

Using lung cancer cell lines, tissue, and blood specimens, researchers at fiveof the nation’s leading research institutions will undertake a coordinated approachto biomarker discovery using their expertise to study the same sets of specimensby different methods. The researchers will deposit the data in a single repository,and integrate the results to find the most promising biomarkers. Because of thisdesign, this project will also serve as a pilot study to demonstrate the feasibilityof the approach and the ability to integrate the data across different platforms.

If it is successful, the researchers plan to open the project to additional collaboratorsfrom the EDRN.The NCI-EDRN will fund most of the tumor studies, and the Canary Foundationwill provide funding for the cell culture studies. Projects funded by NCI include: Protein biomarker discovery: In-Depth Proteomic Analysis of Plasmasfrom Subjects with Lung Cancer Arising in Current, and Never Smokers (PrincipalInvestigator (PI): Hanash) Genome analysis: Mining the Genome and Transcriptome in Lung Cancerfrom Never Smokers (PI: Gazdar) Cellular alterations: Mitochondrial Mutations in Lung Cancer fromNever Smokers (PI: David Sidransky, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,Baltimore, Md.) Genome analysis: Genomic Studies of Lung Cancer Arising in Current,and Never Smokers (PIs: Wan Lam and Stephen Lam, British Columbia Cancer Agency,Vancouver, British Columbia) Projects funded by the Canary Foundation include:Protein biomarker discovery: Proteomic Analysis of Lung Cancer Cell Lines(PI: Hanash)Tumor biomarker discovery: Biomarker Discovery for Lung Cancer in NeverSmokers (PI: Gazdar) Genome analysis: Genomic Studies of Lung Cancer Cell Lines from Lung CancersArising in Current, and Never Smokers (PIs: Lam and Lam) RNA analysis: MicroRNA Profiles of a Lung Cancer Cell Line Panel (PI: MuneeshTewari, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Wash.) Genome analysis: Genome-Wide DNA Methylation Profiling of Lung Adenocarcinomasfrom Never Smokers and Current Smokers (PI: Ite Laird-Offringa, University ofSouthern California, Los Angeles)

"This project is extremely important, both in its approach toward lung cancer detection and in its structure as a multi-institutional, transdisciplinary project funded through a public-private partnership,” said John E. Niederhuber, M.D., director of the National Cancer Institute. “Identification of biomarkers, which tell us who is at risk for cancer and help diagnose cancer at the earliest possible stages, is an important priority in cancer prevention research and a key component in efforts to reduce the burden of this disease.

"Canary Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to the goal of identifying cancerearly through a simple blood test and then isolating it with imaging. Since 2004,Canary has raised over $30 million in pledges towards its initial goal of $50million for early detection research. Its collaborative research programs spanmultiple disciplines and institutions. 100 percent of donations go to early detectionresearch activities.

For more information, please visit www.canaryfoundation.org. NCI leads the National Cancer Program and the NIH effort to dramatically reducethe burden of cancer and improve the lives of cancer patients and their families,through research into prevention and cancer biology, the development of new interventions,and the training and mentoring of new researchers. For more information aboutcancer, please visit the NCI Web site at http://www.cancer.gov or call NCI'sCancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).The NCI’s Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) brings together dozens of institutionsto help accelerate the translation of biomarker information into clinical applicationsand to evaluate new ways of testing cancer in its earliest stages and for cancerrisk. For more information, please visit http://edrn.nci.nih.gov/.