The Lung Cancer Epidemic: How we can end it in the next decade

Speaker: Nasser Hanna MD

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death in the United States, but this was not always the case. During the first half of the 20th century, lung cancer was an uncommon cause of suffering; however, with the increase in cigarette consumption, previous lack of an effective screening intervention or treatment beyond surgery and radiation, lung cancer suffering became an epidemic in the second half of the 20th century and has continued to be in the first 20 years of this century. The tide has turned, however, as cigarette consumption has declined, lung screening with a low dose CT scan has proven to save lives, the genetic blueprint for lung cancer has been defined, strategies to harness the immune system to kill lung cancer have been discovered, and advocacy and funding have begun to rapidly rise. We are now well positioned to end the lung cancer epidemic after 100 years of needless suffering and 8 million lives lost in the United States.

About the Speaker: Nasser Hanna, MD is a medical oncologist at the IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center. He earned his BA in Biology at Saint Louis University, his MD from University of Missouri, completed an internal medicine residency at the University of Iowa and a medical oncology fellowship at Indiana University. He is the Tom and Julie Wood Family Foundation Professor of Lung Cancer Clinical Research, the founder and chairperson of End Lung Cancer Now, and the Chief of cancer screenings at IU Health.

Sponsor : Karen Bumb