Our laboratory is focused on translational lung cancer research.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women in the United States.
While cigarette smoking is the major risk factor for lung cancer, epidemiological data indicate that host susceptibility factors such as gender are also important. For example, the incidence of lung cancer in females is increasing while the incidence in males is decreasing and the proportion of never-smoked lung cancer patients is more than twice as high in females compared to males. While patterns of tobacco consumption and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke may explain these observations, data suggests that inherited genetic factors such as polymorphisms in metabolic enzymes and environmental factors such as diet may play important roles in lung cancer susceptibility. The research in the lab utilizes novel approaches to study the early pathogenesis of lung cancers with the goals of developing methods to enhance the early diagnosis of cancer and of understanding the clincal importance of genetic and environmental susceptibility factors. Previous work done at Columbia University by Regina Santella, Ph.