Previously Funded Research

Hilary Robbins, PhD

International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC

Research Project:

Lung cancer risk assessment for people who never smoked

Summary:

Approximately 25% of lung cancers occur among people who never smoked, even though smoking is the most important cause of lung cancer. For people with a smoking history, studies have shown that screening with CT scans can reduce lung cancer deaths. However, screening should not be offered to most people who never smoked, because they are very unlikely to develop lung cancer, and the harms of screening would outweigh the benefits. To allow early detection of lung cancer among people who never smoked, we need a way to identify the small number of people who have high risk of lung cancer. This can be done by developing a risk assessment tool, which estimates a person’s likelihood of being diagnosed with lung cancer in the future. Then, people who are likely to develop lung cancer can be offered screening.

This project will develop a risk assessment tool for lung cancer in people who never smoked. The project team is located at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO) and is the data coordinating center for the Lung Cancer Cohort Consortium (LC3). The LC3 database includes information on 1.4 million research participants who never smoked, including risk factors at baseline and lung cancer development during follow-up. Using the LC3 data, the team will develop a risk tool including age, sex, race/ethnicity, geographical region, family history of lung cancer, personal health history, passive smoking, and body size. Next, a second tool will additionally add information from blood-based biomarkers. Using both tools, the researchers will estimate the number and percentage of people who never smoked whose lung cancer risk is high enough that they should be offered screening.

The long-term goal for this research is to allow high-risk people who never smoked to be identified and offered lung cancer screening, while avoiding screening for the large majority who have low risk and are unlikely to benefit.