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New research presented at the 2025 Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) Annual Meeting reveals that anatomic lung resections, such as lobectomy and segmentectomy, are associated with improved long-term survival compared to wedge resection for patients with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The study analyzed outcomes for more than 32,000 stage 1A NSCLC patients using data from the STS General Thoracic Surgery Database (STS GTSD) with long-term follow-up linked to the National Death Index and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services database, which provides up to 10 years of survival data. Lobectomy for stage 1A NSCLC offered the highest survival...

Cannabis poses a greater threat to health than tobacco, lung experts have warned. The warning comes on the day that Home Secretary David Blunkett is due to make a Commons statement about the future of government drug policy. Many young people are simply not aware that smoking cannabis may put them at increased risk of respiratory cancers and infections . Dame Helena Shovelton: The Home Affairs Select Committee has recommended that cannabis is downgraded from a class B drug to class C. This would mean that possession would lead to a caution, rather than arrest. The British Lung Foundation is...

Recently, Prof. Huang Qing's group studied the new functions of ganoderic acids. They discovered that a compound, ganoderic acid A (GAA), could help fight cancer by targeting glucose transporters, proteins that cancer cells use to take in sugar. Ganoderic acid A (GAA) is a bioactive compound extracted from Ganoderma lucidum, a medicinal mushroom widely used in traditional Chinese medicine. Known for its diverse therapeutic properties, GAA has attracted attention for its potential anticancer and antidiabetic effects. In this study, the researchers focused on two glucose transporters, GLUT1 and GLUT3, which are produced in higher amounts by cancer cells because they...

People with limited-stage small cell lung cancer may benefit from adding immunotherapy to chemoradiation, but not if both treatments are given at the same time, new research finds. Findings of the multi-institutional Phase III trial, which also found that twice-daily radiation treatments offer greater survival benefits than once-daily treatment, were presented. The research comes on the heels of a recent study showing immunotherapy given after radiation and chemotherapy are completed can increase overall survival. Researchers in this new study, the NRG Oncology/Alliance LU005 trial, wanted to test whether there would be a similar benefit when delivering the treatments at the...

Float like a butterfly, sniff out cancer like a bee? Honeybees can detect the subtle scents of lung cancer in the lab — and even the faint aroma of disease that can waft from a patient’s breath. Inspired by the insects’ exquisite olfactory abilities, scientists hooked the brains of living bees up to electrodes, passed different scents under the insects’ antennae and then recorded their brain signals. “It’s very clear — like day and night — whether [a bee] is responding to a chemical or not,” says Debajit Saha, a neural engineer at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Different...

Trump hater Kathy Griffin is in the news again. Kathy Griffin cannot speak for a few weeks after having vocal cord surgery. Excerpt from Fox News: On Tuesday, the 63-year-old comedian – who has been open about her vocal cord issues since being diagnosed with lung cancer in 2021 – uploaded a video to Instagram explaining the details of her impending vocal cord surgery. The actress revealed she will not be able to speak for a couple of weeks.

Young people who smoked marijuana in the 1960s were seen as part of the counterculture. Now the cannabis culture is mainstream. A 2022 survey sponsored by the National Institutes of Health found that 28.8% of Americans age 19 to 30 had used marijuana in the preceding 30 days—more than three times as many as smoked cigarettes. Among those 35 to 50, 17.3% had used weed in the previous month, versus 12.2% for cigarettes. While marijuana use remains a federal crime, 24 states have legalized it and another 14 permit it for medical purposes. Last week media outlets reported that the...

A comprehensive review by an international consortium of scientists has raised serious concerns about the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines’ safety profile. Review articles are summaries of current research on a particular topic. They are also sometimes called literature reviews or secondary sources. The review, “N1-methyl-pseudouridine (m1Ψ): Friend or foe of cancer?” published on Science Direct, delves into the potential implications of a vaccine ingredient—N1-methyl-pseudouridine (m1Ψ)—that may play a role in immune suppression and cancer proliferation. m1Ψ was incorporated into Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine to enhance its efficacy. This component was introduced in the mRNA vaccine as a means to produce a...

Yesterday the Expose published an article which highlighted just a few of the various diseases that were found to be potentially caused by parasites, including cancers. A recent review of nine published research papers by Doctor William Makis further supports the views in the article, but Dr Makis is more qualified to say “it is a reasonable hypothesis that COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Turbo Cancer patients could benefit significantly from anti-parasitic drugs.” One anti parasitic drug in particular, Fenbendazole, however, has not been sanctioned for human use by the FDA, but despite lacking “official” approval, it is cheap, safe and more...

A regimen of pre-surgical immunotherapy and chemotherapy followed by post-surgical immunotherapy significantly improved event-free survival (EFS) and pathologic complete response (pCR) rates compared to chemotherapy alone for patients with operable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to results of a Phase III trial. The AEGEAN trial evaluated durvalumab given perioperatively, meaning therapy is given both before and after surgery. Participants on the trial received either pre-surgical (neoadjuvant) durvalumab and platinum-based chemotherapy followed by post-surgical (adjuvant) durvalumab or neoadjuvant placebo and chemotherapy followed by adjuvant placebo. Of the patients receiving perioperative durvalumab, 17.2% had a pCR compared to just 4.3% of...

Researchers are testing a drug against obesity and diabetes, and now a team reports that substance has a beneficial effect on mice with experimental lung cancer. The substance is the short-chain fatty acid propionate, which is naturally produced by bacteria in our gut. This new research study shows that treating mice with lung cancer with propionate can reduce the occurrence of metastases. The study also demonstrates a role for propionate in increasing the effectiveness of Cisplatin, a commonly used drug for lung cancer patients. One of these programs is called EMT (epithelial-mesenchymal transition), which existed even when we were still...

Combination immunotherapy with the anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody durvalumab and other novel agents outperforms durvalumab alone in the neoadjuvant (pre-surgical) setting for early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to researchers. The multicenter, randomized Phase II NeoCOAST clinical trial evaluated neoadjuvant durvalumab alone and in combination with each of the following novel immunotherapies: the anti-CD73 monoclonal antibody oleclumab, the anti-NKG2A monoclonal antibody monalizumab, and the anti-STAT3 antisense oligonucleotide danvatirsen. The NeoCOAST study enrolled 84 patients with untreated, resectable (>2cm), stage I-IIIA NSCLC. Eighty-three patients received one 28-day cycle of neoadjuvant durvalumab alone or combined with another therapy. The investigators assessed pathological complete...

Osimertinib plus chemotherapy demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful progression-free survival benefit compared to osimertinib alone, according to research. The FLAURA2 study was led by Dr. Pasi A. Jänne from the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Mass. Osimertinib, a potent third-generation EGFR-TKI with central nervous system activity, has garnered attention for its targeted inhibition of both sensitizing and resistance EGFR mutations. According to Dr. Jänne, The FLAURA2 trial builds on the favorable results observed in the phase III FLAURA trial, where osimertinib displayed superiority over comparator EGFR-TKIs. The study enrolled 557 patients and...

Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions looked at 15 diseases and concluded that 371,000 Americans died and 424,000 were permanently disabled as a result of misdiagnoses. About 795,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled every year due to misdiagnosed medical conditions. A new analysis led by experts at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore looks more closely at diagnostic error and its impact. "Prior work has generally focused on errors occurring in a specific clinical setting, such as primary care, the emergency department or hospital-based care," lead author Dr. David Newman-Toker, director of...

Research has found that when alectinib—a safe and effective small molecule kinase inhibitor used to treat some types of advanced lung cancer—was taken with a fuller breakfast, or with lunch, it resulted in significantly higher drug concentrations than when taken with a low-fat breakfast. The researchers evaluated 20 randomized patients who took one of two daily alectinib doses with either low-fat yogurt alone, a full continental breakfast, or a lunch of their choosing. Taking alectinib with low-fat yogurt resulted in 14% less exposure than in the continental breakfast group, and 20% less than in those who took the medication with...

The FDA-approved lung cancer drug osimertinib (sold under the brand name Tagrisso) slashes the risk of death by 51% for certain patients whose cancer is caught early, according to new trial data. “This should be the new standard of care for these patients,” Nathan Pennell, co-director of the Cleveland Clinic Lung Cancer Program, who wasn’t involved in the drug’s development, said in a statement for the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The drug: Lung cancer is the second-most common cancer in the world, with 2.2 million new diagnoses every year. The vast majority fall into a category called “non-small cell...

A pill has been shown to halve the risk of death from a certain type of lung cancer when taken daily after surgery to remove the tumor, according to clinical trial results. The treatment developed by the pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca is called osimertinib and is marketed under the name Tagrisso. It targets a particular type of lung cancer in patients suffering from so-called non-small cell cancer, the most common type, and showing a particular type of mutation. These mutations, on what is called the epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR, affect 10 percent to 25 percent of lung cancer patients...

Over the past decade, the approval of immune checkpoint inhibitors has revolutionized treatment for patients with advanced lung cancer, helping many live longer lives and improving overall survival for the disease. However, an important question has remained unanswered: How long should a patient with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), who receives immunotherapy as part of their initial treatment, continue with treatment? A new retrospective cohort study suggests that it's reasonable to stop immunotherapy treatment at two years as long as their cancer hasn't progressed. The researchers found no statistically significant difference in overall survival between patients who stopped treatment...

More patients are choosing radiation therapy over surgery to treat their early-stage lung cancer, but a new study argues they might be making a mistake. People who are good surgical candidates for lung cancer appear to have a five-year survival rate that's 15 percentage points lower if they opt to have radiation treatment instead, according to findings. Said Dr. Brooks Udelsman: "If you have a patient who is expected to live more than two years, they're probably going to benefit from the surgery." The data included about 24,700 patients whose tumors were surgically removed and nearly 6,000 who underwent targeted...

One of the newest types of cancer drugs, immunotherapies called immune checkpoint inhibitors, has transformed the treatment of lung cancer over the last decade—dramatically improving the survival of some patients with the most common form of this disease, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, only about 20% of patients experience a benefit. A new study reveals key molecular features of lung tumors that could explain why some patients respond to these treatments while others do not. The team has pinpointed factors that may influence the response of NSCLC patients to immunotherapies that inhibit the PD-1 or PD-L1 proteins. The PD-1/PD-L1...