The Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI), a partner organization of the San Francisco-based Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF), is taking the lead on answering these questions. Later this year, ALCMI will launch the Genomics of Young Lung Cancer Study to determine whether lung cancer in young patients harbors a unique spectrum of genetic mutations that could be a potential target for treatment. It is the first multi-center, international study to prospectively analyze the genomes of young lung cancer patients.
“We want to find out what what’s different in young patients with lung cancer,” said Bonnie Addario, a lung cancer survivor and founder of both ALCMI and ALCF.
“We already know that lung cancers in non-smokers often have certain gene changes that are different from those in tumors from smokers and, in some cases, these changes can be used to guide treatment,” said Oxnard, who is the co-principal investigator of the study. “Similarly, young lung cancer may have its own biology.”
The three-year study will enroll 60 patients who were diagnosed with lung cancer before the age of 40. It will open first at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) in Boston and the University of Southern California (USC) and expand to other centers in the U.S. and Europe early next year.
Oxnard’s lab at DFCI will perform whole-exome sequencing—a technique that focuses on only the protein-coding portion of the genome—on study participants’ blood and tumor samples.