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Breathing room – focusing on the ‘other’ lung cancer

Nature Cancer volume 4, pages 1212–1213 (2023)Cite this article

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Charles Rudin completed his MD, PhD, medical and oncology training at the University of Chicago, where he joined the department of medicine faculty in 1998. He directed the lung, esophageal and head and neck cancer program at Johns Hopkins University from 2003 to 2013, while also serving as associate cancer center director for clinical research. He joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2013 as chief of thoracic oncology, co-director of the Druckenmiller Center for Lung Cancer Research, and the Sylvia Hassenfeld Chair in Lung Cancer Research.

Serendipity struck indirectly with the advent of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), an ambitious National Institutes of Health program to characterize the genetic landscapes of common cancer types. After an initial pilot phase, a major expansion was announced in 2010 with the goal of providing detailed genomic atlases of 20 cancers. Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), despite being the sixth leading cause of cancer mortality in the USA at the time, did not make the list. There was rationale for this exclusion: despite the prevalence of the disease, it would have been difficult to assemble an adequate cohort of SCLC biospecimens that met the strict criteria TCGA mandated for tumor quality and content. SCLC is typically diagnosed by minimal fine-needle aspiration, is rarely resected, and can be extensively necrotic. The exclusion of SCLC from the TCGA opened an opportunity: could we profile the SCLC genome?

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Acknowledgements

The work by C.M.R. on SCLC is supported by an NCI grants R35 CA263816 and U24 CA213274.

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  1. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA

    Charles M. Rudin

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Correspondence to Charles M. Rudin.

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C.M.R. has consulted about oncology drug development with AbbVie, Amgen, Astra Zeneca, D2G, Daiichi Sankyo, Epizyme, Genentech/Roche, Ipsen, Jazz, Kowa, Lilly, Merck, and Syros. He serves on the scientific advisory boards of Auron, Bridge Medicines, DISCO, Earli, and Harpoon Therapeutics.

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Rudin, C.M. Breathing room – focusing on the ‘other’ lung cancer. Nat Cancer 4, 1212–1213 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43018-023-00569-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43018-023-00569-0

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