Scientists identify proteins that can predict lung cancers more than five years before diagnosis

"Early research suggests a path to predict and prevent lung cancer."

That was the headline of a recent story by Nina Agrawal that appeared on the online site of The New York Times. 

The subhead? "Scientists have identified proteins that could signal increased lung cancer risk, as well as a drug that could reduce the odds of a tumor developing."

A team of more than 80 researchers "working across four continents have identified a set of proteins in the blood that accurately predict lung cancers more than five years before diagnosis," the story says.

It indicates, too, that the scientists "also found early evidence that an existing anti-inflammatory drug [canakinumab] could significantly reduce lung cancer risk in people with elevated concentrations of these proteins, which they linked to inflammation."

The findings were published in the journal Cell. Lung cancer, the Times story says, "kills more people worldwide than any other cancer." Fewer than one-third of people diagnosed survive past five years.

Dr. Charles Swanton

"Prevention is the solution in my mind," the article quotes Dr. Charles Swanton, oncologist and director of the Francis Crick Institute in the United Kingdom who was senior author of the  paper. 

Swanton, who recently joined the board of Novartis, the maker of canakinumab, also contends that the findings suggest "smoke causes mutations and inflammation, which together cause cancer."

The drug, according to the story, "nearly halved the risk of lung cancer among 2,300 patients in the trial who had higher-than-average expression of the 14 proteins."

Dr. Peter Mazzone, a pulmonologist at the Cleveland Clinic, on the other hand, offers a massive caveat. He's quoted as warning about canakinumab's potential side effects, including increased risk of infection and sepsis, and says that "even within a narrow population, it could still be too toxic for the benefit to outweigh the harms. It's possible that a different medicine that targets the same pathway could work and would be safer." 

More information on new research can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, aVitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten aimed at male caregivers. My other books are MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of my newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that I co-authored with my then 8-year-old granddaughter. Check out my website at https://woodyweingarten.com for details.

Half of the patients with advanced lung cancer, America's deadliest, reject treatment, study says

Fifty-two percent of metastatic lung cancer patients fail to get life-extending treatments, a new study finds.

According to a recent story by Simar Bajaj in The New York Times, the reason they skip such treatments as chemotherapy, immunotherapy. and targeted therapy is, experts suggest, because of "access issues, fatalism, and shame."

The Times article reports that the study, published in JAMA Oncology, "analyzed more than 250,000 people on Medicare between 2006 and 2021, with an average age of 73, and found that the proportion of patients who received these treatments increased only slightly over time, to 48 percent from 45 percent."

More than 110,000 Americans are annually diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer, the deadliest cancer in the United States.

Dr. Carolyn J. Presley

But over the past 15 years, Dr. Carolyn J. Presley, chief of thoracic medical oncology at Ohio State University (who wasn't involved in the study ), is quoted, dozens of promising new drugs have come to market. For some patients, a pill can hold the disease in check for years, "so the fact that so many older adults are not getting treatment is really, really sobering."

Some patients who smoked "might feel like they brought this disease upon themselves," Bajaj's story says,  and — according to Dr. Adam Fox, pulmonologist at the Medical University of South Carolina, who led the study — the stigma not only contributes to diagnostic delays but also to patients feeling unworthy of care.

Fatalism, the lingering belief that metastatic lung cancer is hopeless and treatment is unlikely to help, might be adopted by some primary care and emergency medicine doctors, the article suggests.

As for access issues, "one of the biggest barriers to treatment is not being diagnosed in time. Screening can catch tumors early, but it remains widely underutilized, largely because most people don't know it's available and complicated eligibility criteria make it difficult for docs to figure out who qualifies," Bajaj's piece notes.

More information on Stage 4, metastasized disease can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, aVitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten aimed at male caregivers. My other books are MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of my newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that I co-authored with my then 8-year-old granddaughter. Check out my other website at https://woodyweingarten.com for details.