Lung Cancer Study Aims to Identify Early Detection and Prevention Method

Lung Cancer Early Detection

Lung cancer is one of the only common cancers without a standardized method for early detection and prevention - a frightening situation when you consider it is the No. 1 cancer killer in both men and women in the United States, and that more Americans die each year from lung cancer than from breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers combined.

An ongoing prevention study at the University of Colorado Cancer Center is currently recruiting both current and former smokers to look for smoking related damage in their lungs and to determine if a study medication can block the damage from progressing to lung cancer.

"For lung cancer, prevention may be the key to saving more lives, but unfortunately, there is no mammogram for the lungs," said Robert Keith, MD, lead study investigator and associate professor in the Department of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center's School of Medicine and the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

"Besides smoking cessation " which is the best prevention method (for lung cancer) right now " there is not much else you can do to prevent this disease. We know that the majority of lung cancer in the US is diagnosed in former smokers, and with this study we hope to find a method for finding areas of damage and stopping those areas from progressing to cancer."

The use of specific natural or man-made drugs to reverse, suppress, or prevent cancer growth is called chemoprevention and is currently an area of active clinical research. Chemoprevention of lung cancer has not yet become standard therapy. Keith and his colleagues will be testing the drug Iloprost through the UCCC at both the University of Colorado Hospital and Denver VA Medical Center.

Participants in the study will be asked to provide a sputum sample that can be analyzed for abnormal cells that indicate airway damage as a result of smoking. The participant will then undergo a bronchoscopy followed by six months of receiving the drug or a placebo, and then another bronchoscopy.

The study is sponsored by the Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant in lung cancer from the National Cancer Institute " a 5-year, $11 million grant awarded to the CU Cancer Center in 2003.