Translating Research to Treatment for Lung Cancer

Christine Wilson, cancer survivor, shares her experiences from the Abramson Cancer Center’s 2012- Focus on Lung Cancer Conference. In this blog, she discusses how the new treatments for lung cancer come about from research in the lab.

"We have a phenomenal interdisciplinary research program in lung cancer. It's really unique to Penn Medicine. We bring together the experts from every field, and our patients are always the center of everything we do." - Chi Van Dang, MD, PhD, director, Abramson Cancer Center

From the Lab to the Patient

Dr. Van Dang set the tone for the day in his introductory remarks when he stated the current goal of lung cancer research is to "move from remission to cure." The pathway to that progress is through what is known as translational research.

Translational research takes new knowledge from the laboratory and uses it to develop new approaches to cancer treatment.

For lung cancer, and many other cancers, that increasingly means being able to profile individual tumors, identifying specific genetic mutations and changes that provide targets for therapy. Penn Medicine is leading the way with a new Center for Personalized Diagnostics that will not only provide these critical services to patients but expand the research base by identifying new genes and ways to control their behavior.

The other "new tools" in the fight against lung cancer are coming from the field of immunotherapy--using the body's own immune system to recognize and fight cancers. Penn is a national leader in this emerging area of cancer therapy.

Learn more about the Center for Personalized Diagnostics.