Cancer Center joins world’s first
collaborative lung cancer registry
With a grim overall five-year lung cancer survival rate of 15 percent, an international effort has been launched by Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) to potentially revolutionize the prevention, detection and treatment of the disease.
The University of Colorado Cancer Center is one of 11 leading research
institutions joining RPCI to establish the first international lung
cancer registry – the Stacy Scott Lung Cancer Registry. The goal of this global
collaboration is to deepen understanding of lung cancer at its most treatable,
early stages. The registry will be housed at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Fred Hirsch, MD, PhD, of the University of Colorado Cancer Center and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, said, “The registry’s principal value lies in combining data from many institutions. The statistical power is so much greater, more conclusive than what a single institution could develop on its own.”
Precancerous lesions for lung cancer, which previously have been undetectable, can now be visualized using technologies such as autofluorescence bronchoscopy (AFB). Understanding how precancerous conditions become cancerous has been difficult because no single institution was able to gather data from enough patients or to follow up patients for a sufficient period of time to provide clinically relevant answers. To resolve these issues, principal investigators from the 11 centers have agreed to contribute patient information to this multi-institutional, high-risk lung cancer patient registry.
The Stacey Scott Lung Cancer Registry is named for a previously healthy non-smoking 38-year-old woman who lost her four-month battle with the disease in 2005. Mrs. Scott was a patient of Dr. Gregory Loewen at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
The breakthrough collaboration includes preeminent lung cancer clinicians and researchers from 11 institutions. These are Roswell Park Cancer Institute, headquartered in Buffalo, NY (registry direction); University of Colorado Cancer Center; BC Cancer Agency, Vancouver, BC, Canada; Academic Hospital Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA; Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, Jacksonville, FL, and Scottsdale, AZ; New York University Medical Center, New York, NY; Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; The Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, OH; The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; and University of Chicago Cancer Research Center, Chicago, IL.
For more information, visit RPCI's website at www.roswellpark.org, call 1-877-ASK-RPCI (1-877-275-7724) or e-mail askrpci@roswellpark.org.
