honored for new lung cancer treatment
David R. Jones, assistant professor of surgery and a member of
the U.Va. Cancer
Center's Thoracic Oncology Program, has won the prestigious
Career Development Award for translational lung cancer research
from the American Association for Cancer Research.
two-year award of $100,000 followed a national competition and
was the only one awarded this year. Translational research is
designed to take important clinical problems, like treating lung
cancer, into the laboratory and then "translate" the laboratory
findings into meaningful care plans for patients.
cancer is the most common cancer in the United States and kills
more people annually than breast, colorectal and prostate cancers
combined," Jones said. "Unfortunately, lung cancer is very resistant
to chemotherapy and radiation. We have identified a novel protein,
called nuclear factor kappa B, which chemotherapy activates in
lung tumors. Once activated, this protein sets off signals in
the tumor cell that tell it to survive at any cost, thus helping
to make the tumor cell resistant to chemotherapy.
the laboratory we have been able to show that when activation
of this protein is inhibited, lung cancer cells die very quickly
and with lower, less toxic doses of chemotherapy. So instead of
giving a patient higher doses or more frequent chemotherapy and
radiation, this research is designed to prevent tumor cells from
becoming resistant to chemotherapy," he said.
will receive the award at the AACR's annual meeting in New Orleans
in March. In addition to the AACR grant, Jones's research is supported
by a grant from the National Cancer Institute of more than $600,000.