UCL Hospitals Charitable Foundation continues to support research into lung cancer by fundraising for the Lungs for Living programme.  Led by Professor Sam Janes, the research aims to investigate early lung cancer to develop new treatments for the disease.  Their work has been aided by the recent refurbishment of the Lungs for Living Research Centre, supported by UCL Hospitals Charitable Foundation.

Since the opening of the new facility, Professor Janes has begun extensive new clinical trials and received several prestigious grants towards the research.  One of the grants is a Newton International Fellowship from the Royal Society.  This has enabled Sandra Gomez-Lopez (pictured) to join Lungs for Living following her PhD at Cambridge University and laboratory experience in California and Mexico.  Sandra is interested in the early stages of lung cancer development in the hope that we can stop progression to invasive lung cancer.

The research team is also joined by post doctoral fellow Foteini Kouiri and Principle Investigator Celine Denais.  Foteini joins the team from Northwestern University in the USA, where she has been studying rare brain tumours.  At Lungs for Living, she will study which genes are mis-expressed in lung cells that cause them to behave like cancers in the hope that we can repurpose some therapies as chemopreventative treatment strategies for those at most risk.

Celine Denais has joined the team as Principle Investigator after a post-doctoral period at Cornell and Harvard Universities.  Celine was recently published in renowned journal "Science looking at how the nuclear structure of cells is disorganised in travel through tight spaces and how this may lead to early cancer functions such as invasion and migration of cells.

In 2016 the Lungs for Living team published 18 scientific papers including important insights into human behaviours and anxiety around the risks of lung cancer and being sreened.  This work is part of the Lung Cancer CT screening project that has screened nearly 500 patients so far this year.

We are extremely appreciative for of all the support that has been shown for Lungs for Living, thank you to all of our supporters.