What Are Patients and Caregivers Talking About? Lung Cancer Biomarkers

What Are Patients and Caregivers Talking About? Lung Cancer Biomarkers By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, MSPH Since the FDA approved the first targeted treatment for NSCLC in 2003, treatment decisions for NSCLC are increasingly made based on individual genomics.1,2  There are now 20 distinct biomarkers that serve as identification points differentiating cancer cells from healthy cells and distinguishing one expression of cancer from another. Science has progressed from identifying tumor cells on a slide to genetic and biochemical identification of NSCLC’s driving agents. Pharma companies are developing and improving increasingly targeted treatments.3 The science is also revealing just [...]

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Sep 2021By |0 Comments

Engaging with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer and Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients and Caregivers

Engaging with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer and Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients and Caregivers By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, MSPH The word “Earth” doesn’t reflect the complexity and diversity of the planet. Similarly, the term “lung cancer” only identifies the location of the cancer. There are two general categories, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC), differentiated by cell size, characteristics, treatments and prognosis. Genetic research continues to differentiate lung cancers at a molecular level, revealing subtypes within those categories, creating opportunities for increasingly targeted therapies. For example, since eight driver mutations have been [...]

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Jul 2021By |0 Comments

Menaced by COVID-19, Susceptible Individuals Counter with Vaccine Acceptance

Menaced by COVID-19, Susceptible Individuals Counter with Vaccine Acceptance By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, MSPH “The sickest I've ever been!" wrote a participant in Inspire’s COVID-19 HealthJourney survey about surviving COVID-19. Another went into greater detail when asked to share their COVID-19 story. I’ve had systemic lupus (SLE) and Discoid Lupus for 25 years. I’ve been on Hydroxychloroquine since my diagnosis. [In March] I woke with a strep-like sore throat, high fever, migraine, my body was in horrible pain. I called the doc. After being masked, gloved and gowned I was whisked into an isolated room, handled like [...]

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Mar 2021By |0 Comments

COVID-19 vaccines and vulnerable populations: Over 26K participate in ongoing study

COVID-19 vaccine and vulnerable populations: Over 26K participate in ongoing longitudinal study  By Richard Tsai Crowd-sourcing info for a friend: have any of you who have lupus SLE and/or discoid taken the vaccine? Which one? What were your side effects? Thanks for sharing. — Brittney Cooper (@ProfessorCrunk) March 9, 2021 COVID-19 vaccines have been released. Are people hesitant about getting vaccinated? How are people responding? How do people with comorbidities, like cancer, psoriasis, asthma or sarcoidosis feel about getting vaccinated? If they have received the vaccines, how have they responded? It is now possible to find out [...]

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Mar 2021By |0 Comments

Where Do You Start When Searching for Exceptional Responders?

Where Do You Start When Searching for Exceptional Responders? By Richard Tsai Before 2012, if a cancer clinical trial had only one successful remission amid a field of failures, the drug under trial was thought to be unsuccessful. We weren’t asking a key question: What made it work for that one participant? The one remission was an exceptional responder. Exceptional responders are in every clinical trial, but until whole genome sequencing (WGS) became available, it was impossible to scrutinize them. In 2012, researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering used WGS to learn what caused the remarkable and durable [...]

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Mar 2021By |0 Comments

Good News about Lung Cancer? Thanks to Bench Science and Pharma

Good News about Lung Cancer? Thanks to Bench Science and Pharma By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, MSPH Targeted therapies, monoclonal antibodies, and immune checkpoint inhibitors are the good news - making a significant difference in lung cancer mortality, a new study states. Published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the report said, “Mortality from NSCLC decreased even faster than the incidence ...and this decrease was associated with a substantial improvement in survival over time that corresponded to the timing of approval of targeted therapy.” 1Posts and reassurances that people read while visiting the American Lung Association’s Lung [...]

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Nov 2020By |0 Comments

What Do Patients and Caregivers Know about Immunotherapy?

What Do Patients and Caregivers Know about Immunotherapy? Inspire’s Immunotherapy Awareness and Perceptions Survey According to a 2012 study, patient activation means “having the knowledge, skills, and confidence to manage one’s health.”  The study confirmed that better health outcomes are typically associated with greater patient knowledge and activation.1  As the field of oncology continues to embrace personalized medicine with immuno-oncology and immunotherapy, patient activation is essential. Today, in a world with content flooding every single channel and device we own, consumers are either over-informed, or under-informed.  A wide range of information sources, ranging from news outlets to [...]

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Sep 2017By |0 Comments

Video Vignettes: Through Your Own Lens – Dealing With Side Effects

Video Vignettes: Through Your Own Lens - Dealing With Side Effects You wouldn’t think that someone could speak with delight about an experience with diarrhea. Yet when Amy,* a lung cancer patient, speaks about her search for help with “horrific diarrhea” in the video below, she sounds happy. Her relief at finding answers that actually worked to stop this side effect is palpable. As she describes her experience, imagine yourself in her situation while undergoing treatment: experiencing unending GI urgency, or having such a severe scalp itch that it interrupts your ability to sleep and begins to [...]

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Jun 2017By |0 Comments