Dr. David Mu, a research investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, has been named one of six recipients of $100,000 in grant funding from Joan’s Legacy: The Joan Scarangello Foundation to Conquer Lung Cancer. Dr. Mu’s study will use a new gene discovery method, known by the acronym ROMA, to search for genes that are frequently altered in lung cancer cells in women and to further study these genes to determine how they contribute to lung cancer. His ultimate goal is to create diagnostic methods and therapies that are potentially more suitable for women with lung cancer.

“ In recent years, there has been a rapid rise in the number of women diagnosed with lung cancer. Many studies suggest that women are more vulnerable to cigarette smoke-induced lung cancer than men are, but they also show that women who are non-smokers are statistically more likely to develop lung cancer than men who are non-smokers,” Dr. Mu explained. “Although smoking is a major culprit in this unfortunate upward trend, other genetic, social, and environmental factors are thought to play a role in the development of lung cancer in women. Clearly, it is necessary to understand the genetic basis of lung cancer in women in order to be better able to diagnose and treat lung cancer, which kills more women in the United States each year than breast and ovarian cancers combined.”

Other grant recipients include researchers at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the University of Michigan, the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, and Columbia University.

Joan’s Legacy is named for Joan Scarangello, a writer and nonsmoker who died at age 47 after a valiant nine-month fight with lung cancer. Joan’s Legacy is committed to fighting lung cancer by searching for a cure and focusing greater attention on the world’s leading cancer killer. Funding $1.3 million in new and cutting-edge research in only three years, Joan’s Legacy is fast becoming the “venture capital” for lung cancer research. For more information about Joan’s Legacy and lung cancer, please visit www.joanslegacy.org.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a private, non-profit basic research institution. Under the leadership of Dr. Bruce Stillman, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), more than 330 scientists at the Laboratory conduct groundbreaking research in cancer, neurobiology, plant genetics, and bioinformatics. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is one of eight National Cancer Institute-designated basic research centers in the U.S. and the only such center in the tri-state area.

For more information, visit www.cshl.edu.