BU researchers awarded $4.6 million in U2C grant to develop innovative lung cancer biomarkers

BU researchers awarded $4.6 million in U2C grant to develop innovative lung cancer biomarkers

Lung cancer screening using chest computed tomography (CT) can detect lung cancer earlier and make the disease less fatal; But even among intermediate-risk nodules, only a small minority are cancerous.

Marc Lenburg, PhD, professor of medicine in the Department of Computational Medicine at the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine at Boston University, wants to address this issue. He received a five-year, $4.6 million U2C grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Its goal is to develop and validate innovative biomarkers from nasal swabs, blood and advanced imaging analysis to determine which intermediate-risk lung nodules discovered during screening or as part of routine clinical care are lung cancer. “This would expedite cancer treatment while minimizing invasive testing and clinical uncertainty in patients with noncancerous nodules,” says Lenburg.

The project continues a more than decade-long collaboration between researchers at Boston University, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and Lahey Health and is co-led by Lenburg. Jennifer E. Beane-Ebel, PhD, Boston University, along with Steven Dubinett, MD and William Hsu, PhD from UCLA.

Researchers will work with Veracyte (NASDAQ:VCYT) and LungLife Al (LON:LLAI), two molecular diagnostics companies, to refine and standardize these biomarkers so that useful biomarkers can be quickly deployed clinically. The project expands on previous genomic research at BUSM that identified an airway injury field associated with lung cancer that can be used to detect lung cancer.

Lenburg is part of a research group that includes Beane and Avrum Spira, MD, MSc from BUSM, who are well-known in the field of genomic technology and translational bioinformatics. Her main research interest is the molecular pathogenesis of tobacco-related diseases such as lung cancer. They use genomic technologies to identify new therapeutic targets and biomarkers to guide clinical management. Some of this work is already benefiting patients: A genomic nasal swab test for lung cancer co-developed by the group is currently being used in a large, prospective clinical utility study to demonstrate its ability to influence physicians' treatment of patients with lung nodules detected on CT scans.

This new research is part of NCI's Early Detection Research Network (EDRN), which was founded in 2000 to transform the way early cancers are detected, including by promoting both innovative and rigorous approaches to biomarker discovery and validation. Since then, the EDRN has grown to more than 300 investigators. Lenburg's research has been supported by EDRN since 2010.

Source:

Boston University School of Medicine

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