Last week I had the honor of presenting at the IASLC World Conference on Lung Cancer, which is the world’s largest meeting dedicated to lung cancer and other thoracic malignancies. There were more than 7,000 researchers, physicians and specialists from over 100 countries in Denver for four days. It was an incredible experience.
IASLC’s goal is to increase awareness and collaboration so that the latest developments in lung cancer research can be understood and implemented throughout the world. The global collaboration I saw at the conference was impressive!
The incidence of people who never smoked and were diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has increased in some regions from 13% to 28% during the past six years - very scary. We need international collaboration to improve the advancement of lung cancer research, treatment, and prevention. Already, precision medicine, which is based on the molecular characteristics of the tumor, has changed the life expectancy for many lung cancer patients. There is much more work to be done.