$10 Million Grant Awarded for Lung Cancer Study

The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has been awarded a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to expand its existing lung cancer chemoprevention study. Chemoprevention employs the use of drugs or other agents to inhibit the development or progression of malignant changes in cells.

A multidisciplinary team headed by Dr. Waun Ki Hong, head of the division of Cancer Medicine and chairman of the department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, will use the grant to conduct a clinical chemoprevention trial while doing parallel genetic, molecular and pharmacologic studies in the lab. Research gathered from both the clinical and basic research studies will feed each other, enhancing and complementing the knowledge gained from individual projects, said Dr. Hong.

"We want to find the ‘tamoxifen’ for lung cancer, but we also want to better understand how these agents react in the body on the most basic cellular levels," said Dr. Hong.

This is the fourth NCI grant that M.D. Anderson and Dr. Hong have received to conduct research in this emerging field. In 1995, Dr. Hong’s team was awarded $6 million for the first comprehensive lung cancer chemoprevention program, and in 1991 and 1996, his group received a total of $14 million to study the biology and chemoprevention of head and neck cancer.

"Lung cancer remains a lethal and stubborn disease with tobacco as the leading culprit for this killer," said Dr. Hong. "Though we have seen some improvement in treatment for lung cancer in the last decade, there has been little impact on survival, and people continue to smoke. We certainly applaud those who quit smoking, but the risk for lung cancer remains great. This is where chemoprevention may come in- as a strategy for heading off the disease in those at greatest risk."

With this grant, the program will study the interactions between tobacco carcinogens and chemopreventive agents, the potential of the Cox-2 inhibitor drug Celecoxib for lung cancer chemoprevention, and intermediate markers of lung carcinogenesis.

One of the studies will include a clinical trial of current and former smokers taking Celecoxib, a drug often prescribed for the treatment of osteoarthritis, but recently found effective in reducing colorectal polyps in patients with familial adenomatous polyposis. The trial, led by Dr. Jonathon Kurie, seeks to determine if the drug is an effective and safe agent for reversing lung damage caused by smoking.

Other projects funded by the grant will examine the molecular mechanisms of the Cox-2 enzyme and why some compounds are effective for some patients and not for others.

Other studies will examine molecular and cellular changes in lung tissue and mechanisms that stimulate cell proliferation. The studies will be conducted by Drs. Reuben Lotan, Li Mao, Bharat B. Aggarwal, Robert Newman, Adel El-Naggar, J. Jack Lee and Walter Hittelman.

M.D. Anderson researchers have made many significant chemoprevention findings as a result of research funded by the 1995 grant. Key discoveries include the first molecular evidence that former smokers are still at high risk for developing lung cancer, the effect of the drug Fenretinide in significantly reducing the activity of telomerase – an enzyme vital to the development and growth of cancer – in heavy smokers, and the identification of a possible biomarker for tracking the effectiveness of chemoprevention strategies.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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