The Johns Hopkins Lung Cancer SPORE is in its tenth year and continues to have as its goals, the performance of highly translational research to move ideas from the bench to bedside, and vice versa, to provide new means for the prevention of, risk assessment for, early detection of, gauging prognosis of, and therapy for, lung cancers of all types. In these efforts, extensive formal collaboration with other Lung Cancer SPORE'S is often emphasized. The program uses the flexibility of the SPORE funding mechanism to extend projects that continually evolve higher and higher translational potential and curtail those that do not. There is an emphasis on constantly bringing in new concepts and directions in parallel with fully evolving those areas that are headed for ultimate translational verification and even reaching common clinical practice. In terms of research at the highest translational level, including work at the population level, the SPORE is presently emphasizing the second and third projects (a collaborative venture with the Colorado SPORE), which are testing epigenetic molecular markers which appear to have very high promise for the areas of risk assessment, early detection, and gauging of prognosis of lung cancer. The first project, also aimed at predicting lung cancer risk and prognosis, is taking new approaches to develop genetic markers for these purposes. A fourth project is developing new concepts for lung cancer prevention by taking the concepts through pre-clinical models and initial proof of principle studies in high risk individuals. This work is very complementary with participation of the Hopkins SPORE in the consortium chemoprevention trials (Lung Cancer Biomarker Chemoprevention Consortium-LCBCC) with the other Lung Cancer SPORES and with a collaborative trial of Iloprost in collaboration with the Colorado SPORE. The fifth and sixth projects are both aimed at development of novel therapeutic strategies for lung cancer with one exploiting new insights into these diseases derived from study of molecular pathways guiding early lung development and the other exploring inhibition of fatty acid synthesis as a new approach.
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