A few weeks ago I asked a non-lung cancer researcher about the applicability of his research in lung cancer. Rather than answer my question his response was, “Lung cancer is hopeless. Hopeless.”

I don’t see it that way at all, and wonder how it came to be that he feels that way. In March, Dr. George Sledge, Ballve-Lantero Professor of Oncology at Indiana University and President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), remarked that one of the greatest moments of the last ten years for his profession was last year’s presentation of the clinical trial of crizotinib for lung cancer patients whose tumors harbor a specific genetic alteration called an ALK translocation. He said of moments like this, “They are the moments when scientific promise fuses with a clinical problem to create something altogether novel, something that betters the human condition and changes forever how we look at a disease.”

At the National Lung Cancer Partnership’s annual meeting last year, Dr. Pasi Jänne, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Chair of NLCP’s Scientific Executive Committee, stated, “The last five years have really seen an explosion in our biologic understanding of lung cancer, and I think it’s fair to say that in no other cancer has this information been more rapidly translated into new therapies as in lung cancer. Lung cancer has become the model for personalized medicine for all cancers.”

I write this in anticipation of the peer-reviewed publication of the results of the National Lung Screening Trial, a large randomized study that compared low-dose spiral computed tomography (CT) and standard chest X-ray to screen for lung cancer to reduce deaths by detecting cancers at relatively early stages.  The study was stopped early last fall after it was determined that there were 20 percent fewer lung cancer deaths in the people who got CT scans compared to those who had chest X-rays.  “This is the first time that we have seen clear evidence of a significant reduction in lung cancer mortality with a screening test in a randomized controlled trial," said Dr. Christine Berg, Project Officer for the NLST trial at National Cancer Institute.

I know that I could find many more awe-inspiring examples, but these stories alone demonstrate the type of hope that truly exists for lung cancer today. Of course, there is much more work to be done or else many people would not spend countless hours helping to find a cure for this disease – people like clinicians and lab researchers, patients and survivors, families and friends .  As one of those people, I admit to having to motivate myself on occasion to keep myself going because as George Weinberg said, “Hope never abandons you; you abandon it.”

The next time I see my non-lung cancer researcher friend, I probably should remind him of this.