Smilow Cancer Hospital gets $11M grant

Funds will aid lung cancer research

The grant will aid the team at the hospital to launch a new research program into nonsmall cell lung cancer.

Members of the team fighting non-small cell lung cancer at Yale New Haven’s Smilow Cancer Hospital are brimming with excitement about receiving an $11 million grant to launch a new research program into the disease.

“What this grant is designed to do is to take new therapies and discoveries from the lab to the patients who need them in the clinic and to raise the bar … to develop even better therapies for those who come after,” said Dr. Roy S. Herbst, chief of the medical oncology program at Smilow.

He emphasized that “my proudest thing about the program,” known as a Specialized Program of Research Excellence, is the team of 25 or so doctors and others who will focus on finding treatments for a disease “that kills 200,000 people a year in the United States.”

“We have to do it by looking at big data, sharing our science, sharing our trials and learning from the patients,” Herbst said.

Non-small cell lung cancer comprises almost 90 percent of lung cancers worldwide and they are virtually incurable once they spread to other parts of the body, according to a release. Most cases, but not all, are smoking-related. The grant, which only four other hospitals received, is from the National Cancer Institute.

Researchers are already submitting “a lot of applications and they’re all very high quality … and we also have some coming from Beth Israel (Deaconess Medical Center in Boston) and Harvard,” said Edward Kaftan, associate director for translational research administration at Smilow.

“I think patients are going to benefit from this … but the whole community is going to benefit because of where this puts us in the top echelon of centers,” Herbst said. “This has been three years of work to build this team. It’s grown very quickly here.”

The Yale SPORE’s projects will include immunotherapy, drug development and smoking cessation, according to a release. Also, Herbst said, “One big component of this grant from the government is a careerdevelopment program. … We’re going to nurture young scientists.”