The Joan Gaeta Lung Cancer Fund

Danielle Hicks, Director of Patient Advocacy and Empowerment at the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation shares the BJALCF story and mission with Comcast Newsmakers and upcoming information on the June 11, 2012 Golf Tournament and Simply the Best Dinner Gala VII on November 10, 2012 in San Francisco.

By: Jessica Wagner.  This article was originally published by the Cherokee Ledger-News  on March 14th, 2012

From a former Holly Springs councilwoman to philanthropist, Jacqueline Archer has her hands full, but not to the point where she can’t take on a project that could change lung cancer research for the better.

Archer, with the backing of Rep. Sean Jerguson, R-Holly Springs, is asking state legislators to approve a specialty license plate that will not only fund lung cancer research but also spread awareness.

However, in order for the state to manufacture the vanity plate, Archer said 1,000 pre-paid commitments are required; roughly 300 have signed up so far.

“All of the required paperwork and insurances have to be submitted to the Department of Driver Services (DDS), as well as the logo design,” she said. “Once all of that is approved, that message is sent over to Rep. Jerguson, my dear friend. He will then take it to the delegation, present it and they will vote on it.”

Archer said she is trying to speak before the Georgia legislators prior to a vote being cast. 

As the driving force behind a vanity plate, Archer said she was passionate about the initiative due to her own survival story.

Six years ago, Archer was involved in an accident that required transportation to an area hospital for further evaluation. It was then the mother of three learned that she had been battling Adenocarcinoma, the fastest spreading lung cancer. The mass was described as being the size of the doctor’s fist.

Now at 47, Archer called the car accident a blessing in disguise because the doctors were able to remove the orange-sized, stage III lung cancer before it spread to her brain, which would have lessened her chance for survival. Thirty-one lymph nodes also were removed from her body.

Twelve weeks later, she beat the odds.

Archer’s story took an interesting twist when she told the Ledger-News that she was a lifelong nonsmoker who overcame a disease that kills more than 400 people a day, many of whom have never lifted a cigarette to their mouths.

Archer said she was determined to pinpoint the reason why nonsmokers develop lung cancer.

“There is nothing done for lung cancer; nobody knows why people get it,” she said. 

Figures from the Lung Cancer Foundation illustrate the lack of understanding, as the survival rate has risen a mere .2 percent between 1971 and 2010 (15.5 percent to 15.7 percent), while the breast cancer survival rate has more than doubled.

Colon and prostate cancer survival rates also have risen from 25.3 percent to 64.8 percent and 21 percent to 99.9 percent, respectively.

Archer said when she realized how much this disease is underfunded and how little research has been done, the license plate initiative began.

The money collected from the vanity plate sales are pre-designated for the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI) through the listed recipient The Joan Gaeta Lung Cancer Fund.

“Joan Gaeta died of never-smoking lung cancer. I met Joan 11 weeks after my surgery, and she died the following year,” Archer said. “Her family started a foundation and an annual fundraiser, and I personally chose to align myself with Joan and her family because we have a lot in common.”

Archer said she supports ALCMI, as the organization is on the cutting edge of research and development.

“From what I found out, there are some organizations that are devoted to patient advocacy and awareness, while there are others that are devoted toward research, prevention, early detection and establishing protocol,” she said.

While Archer said she thinks advocacy is good, she wants to back it up and find out how to prevent this disease.

“Working with some of the hospitals nearby, we need to establish some kind of standardization of care so that when someone presents with lung cancer that molecular testing is done because it is not being offered right now,” she said.

Archer said not enough is being done for a disease where time is a factor.

“It spreads quickly; lung cancer patients do not have the luxury of time,” she said. “They have to stop everything … they have to have urgent care and they need to have it from the multi-disciplinary approach, which includes the radiologist, the oncologist, the dietician, the surgeon, etc.”

Until a difference is made and a standardization of care is in place, Archer said lung cancer would continue to claim hundreds of lives daily.

Pre-paid lung cancer vanity plates, which cost $25, can be ordered through www.lungcancerlicenseplate.org. Additional fees implemented from the DDS might apply. Those interesting in pre-paying for the plate need to provide the county they reside and their driver’s license number. Pre-paid plates can be obtained at the DDS by this summer.

By Madonna Behen, HealthDay
Orginally publshed on January 12, 2012 at USAToday.com.  

Lung cancer is the leading cancer killer in the world, and only about 15 percent of cases are diagnosed at an early stage, when it's most treatable.

But two preliminary studies that are scheduled to be presented at a medical meeting this week suggest that scientists are moving closer to developing new screening tests that could potentially detect lung cancer in its earliest stages.

In one report, researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City evaluated tissue samples from healthy smokers and were able to identify precancerous changes in the cells lining the airways leading to the lungs.

"We found that the earliest molecular changes related to lung cancer are present in the airway epithelium of healthy smokers who do not have any detectable microscopic abnormalities in the lung tissue," said study author Dr. Renat Shaykhiev, an assistant professor of genetic medicine at Weill Cornell.

Shaykhiev added that the findings "may lead to the development of novel strategies to prevent lung cancer development at the very early stages, before the development of clinically detectable cancer."

In the second study, researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston developed a blood test that can analyze and determine the exact genetic mutations of circulating tumor cells in a sample size as small as three cells.

"We have developed an extremely sensitive test that could be able to detect mutations present in circulating tumor cells, and we are hoping that from their characterization we would be able to understand diagnostic, prognostic and predictive markers," researcher Heidi Erickson, an assistant professor of thoracic/head and neck medical oncology at MD Anderson, said in an American Association for Cancer Research news release.

"By being able to collect a blood sample from a patient instead of having to do a biopsy, we'll have an opportunity to monitor the patient throughout treatment in an easier way," Erickson said in the release.

One leading lung cancer researcher said the findings, while still very preliminary, are particularly relevant in light of a 2011 groundbreaking study, which showed that screening current and former heavy smokers with three annual low-dose CT scans reduced the risk of death from lung cancer by 20 percent, compared with three annual chest X-rays.

"More than a quarter of patients had one or more pulmonary nodules, but 96 percent of these nodules were not cancer," said Dr. Paul Bunn, the James Dudley chair in cancer research at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in Denver. "So what we'd like to have is some kind of test that, if you have a CT scan and a nodule is found, would help distinguish whether or not that nodule is cancerous."

Bunn noted that other scientists are working on detecting early lung cancer based on proteins in the blood, as well as volatile organic compounds in breath, and that all of the research is still many years away from yielding commercially available tests.

"We make advances one step at a time and these are first steps, but that's important," Bunn said.

The findings were to be presented this week at a lung cancer meeting in San Diego that was jointly sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. Data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

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