We fund translational research to move knowledge as quickly as possible from basic discovery to treatment of patients.

Since 2002, LUNGevity has invested in 191 research projects at 69 institutions in 24 states and the District of Columbia focusing on early detection as well as more effective treatments of lung cancer.

Career Development Award

Jonathan Lehman, MD, PhD
Jonathan Lehman, MD, PhD
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN
Signaling Heterogeneity in Small Cell Lung Cancer

Chemotherapy has been the mainstay for treatment of small cell lung cancer (SCLC)—a highly aggressive subtype of lung cancer—for the past three decades. SCLC responds well to initial treatment but inevitably comes back. No targeted therapy is currently available for patients with SCLC. Dr. Lehman is studying how SCLC becomes resistant to chemotherapy. His research will further our understanding of chemotherapy resistance and identify novel targets for SCLC treatment.


Career Development Award

Rajan Kulkarni, MD, PhD
Rajan Kulkarni, MD, PhD
Oregon Health and Science University (formerly at UCLA Medical Center), Portland, OR
Detecting early stage lung cancer with circulating tumor cells

Dr. Kulkarni is studying how circulating tumor cells (cancer cells that are released into the blood stream) can be used to develop a blood test for lung cancer early detection and treatment. Funding from LUNGevity will help him use a novel technology called the Vortex Chip to test two things: first, if lung cancer be detected early by identifying circulating tumor cells in the blood and second, if there are biomarkers in circulating tumor cells that can differentiate patients who will respond to immunotherapy or chemotherapy.


Piro Lito, MD, PhD
Piro Lito, MD, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
Exploring the therapeutic potential of novel KRAS inhibitors in lung cancer

Dr. Lito is working with a new drug that works efficiently to stop the growth of lung cancer cells with a mutation in the KRAS gene. Funding from LUNGevity will provide resources to test the drug in mice that have KRAS-positive lung cancer. Dr. Lito’s ultimate aim is to develop a clinical trial for the drug for use in patients who test positive for a KRAS mutation.


Kathryn O’Donnell, PhD
Kathryn O’Donnell, PhD
UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX
Dissecting novel mechanisms of lung cancer pathogenesis

Dr. O’Donnell has discovered that lung cancer cells make a protein called PCDH7 that is present on the surface of cancer cells where it may be accessible to therapies. In cooperation with the KRAS protein, the PCDH7 protein relays signals from outside the cell to make cancer cells grow faster. She is studying the function of the PCDH7 protein and developing strategies to reduce its effect on the KRAS pathway.


Early Detection Research Award

This grant was funded in part by Upstage Lung Cancer

Vadim Backman, PhD
Vadim Backman, PhD
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Ankit Bharat, MBBS
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Lung screening via biophotonic analysis of nanoarchitecture of buccal cells

Cells in the respiratory tract are usually stacked in an orderly fashion. As lung cancer develops, the cells get “un-stacked” and their shapes change, giving them the ability to grow and spread to other parts of the body. Dr. Vadim Backman from Northwestern University is utilizing a new technology called Partial Wave Spectroscopy for seeing those cells. With the LUNGevity Early Detection Award, he will check how cells taken from the cheeks of stage I lung cancer patients reflect these early changes with the ultimate goal of using partial wave spectroscopy technology for early detection of lung cancer.


Targeted Therapeutics Research Award

Lauren Averett Byers, MD
Lauren Averett Byers, MD
MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
Don Gibbons, Jr., MD, PhD
MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
Axl as a target to reverse EMT, treatment resistance and immunosuppression

Drs. Byers and Gibbons have discovered that lung cancer cells acquire the ability to hide from the immune system during epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition—a process through which cancer cells develop the ability to spread to other parts of the body (metastasis). The LUNGevity award will help Drs. Byers and Gibbons study the effect of a new drug that can reverse the EMT process and make lung cancer cells more visible to the immune system.


Career Development Award

Patrick Forde, MD (MB, BCh)
Patrick Forde, MD (MB, BCh)
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, Baltimore, MD
Neoadjuvant anti-PD-1 antibody, Nivolumab, in resectable NSCLC

Dr. Forde is working to apply a kind of immunotherapy that has been successful in people with lung cancer in later stages to people with early-stage lung cancer, stimulating their immune system to attack cancer cells. This treatment, nivolumab, uses anti PD-1 antibodies to release the “brakes” on the immune system.


Christine Lovly, MD, PhD
Christine Lovly, MD, PhD
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN
Dissecting the role of negative feedback inhibition in ALK+ lung cancer

A subset of lung cancer patients have mutations in a gene called ALK. Dr. Lovly will identify new molecular targets that can be blocked in combination with ALK inhibitors to overcome the resistance that often develops after successful treatment and to promote better responses.


This grant was funded in part by the American Lung Association

John Poirier, PhD
John Poirier, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
Molecular mechanisms of acquired drug resistance in small cell lung cancer

Small cell lung cancer is an exceptionally aggressive type of lung cancer. While these tumors are initially responsive to a combination of chemotherapy drugs, tumor recurrence is near universal. Dr. Poirier will develop and study models of drug resistance to identify new strategies to overcome chemotherapy resistance.


Early Detection Research Award

Zeynep H. Gümüş, PhD
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY
Steven M. Lipkin, MD, PhD
Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY
Kenneth Offit, MD, MPH
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
Identifying germline risk mutations for early-onset and familial NSCLC

Each year, more than 22,000 people who have never smoked are diagnosed with lung cancer, many at younger ages. Dr. Gümüş and team will identify underlying genes that could indicate a higher risk of developing lung cancer, similar to what has been found with certain forms of breast, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers. People who carry the high-risk genes could then be monitored more carefully.


Abhijit Patel, MD, PhD
Abhijit Patel, MD, PhD
Yale University, New Haven, CT
Detection of early-stage lung cancers via tumor DNA in blood

With the goal of a simple blood test that permits early detection of lung cancer, Dr. Patel will test a new technology to see if it can accurately identify lung cancer-specific telltale changes in the blood of patients with early-stage lung cancer.


Kimberly M. Rieger-Christ, PhD
Kimberly M. Rieger-Christ, PhD
Lahey Hospital & Medical Center, Burlington, MA
Jacob Sands, MD
Lahey Hospital & Medical Center, Burlington, MA
Katrina Steiling, MD, MSc
Boston University, Boston, MA
Nasal biomarkers for the evaluation of lung nodules found by LDCT screening

Dr. Rieger-Christ and team are developing a minimally invasive test using nasal swabs to determine quickly and easily whether nodules found through CT screening are early cancer or benign lesions.


Targeted Therapeutics Research Award

Alberto Chiappori, MD
Alberto Chiappori, MD
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, Tampa, FL
Scott Antonia, MD, PhD
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, Tampa, FL
Antagonism of adenosine A2A receptor to improve lung cancer immunotherapy

Cancer cells have found ways to block the body’s own immune system from helping to destroy the tumor. However, newly developed drugs can make the patient’s own immune system more efficient. This team will administer two different immunotherapy drugs to lung cancer patients and determine whether the addition of another drug, PFB-509, can improve the anti-tumor effects and patient outcomes.


LUNGevity Foundation, in partnership with the Melanoma Research Alliance and the Lung Cancer Research Foundation, is co-funding research on PD-I inhibitor treatment options for both non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and metastatic melanoma (MM) patients

Lucia Beatrice Jilaveanu, MD, PhD
Lucia Beatrice Jilaveanu, MD, PhD
Yale University, New Haven, CT
Response to PD-1 inhibitors in lung cancer and melanoma patients with brain metastases

Brain metastases are extremely common in both NSCLC and melanoma patients. Two new immunity-boosting drugs are showing promise against both of these kinds of cancer. However, whether these drugs work on cancer cells that metastasize and lodge in the brain is not known. Dr. Jilaveanu will study patients with brain metastases treated with the new drugs to find biomarkers that could predict the patients’ response to this treatment.


Julien Sage, PhD
Julien Sage, PhD
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Irving Weissman, MD
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Activating phagocytosis to inhibit small cell lung carcinoma

Drs. Sage and Weissman will test a new immunotherapy to boost the arsenal of immune cells to combat SCLC. They will work to disable a protein on the cancer cells that inhibits macrophages, a type of immune cell that can engulf and destroy cancer cells. This will boost the killing capacity of macrophages and recruit more immune cells to the area by the tumor.