Researchers are changing our understanding of lung cancer, which could lead to new, groundbreaking treatments for the leading cause of cancer-related deaths. “We have made great progress in treating lung cancer, but we still have a long way to go,” says Triparna Sen, PhD, the director of the Lung Cancer Preclinical Therapeutics Platform at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). Lung cancer accounts for approximately 20% of all cancer-related deaths in the U.S. each year, according to the American Cancer Society, with around 225,000 patients diagnosed annually. Sen provides an in-depth look at Ohio State’s lung cancer research on our Cancer-Free World Podcast. Watch via the video player above or YouTube, and listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Lung cancers are primarily divided into two types — non-small cell lung cancers, which make up the majority of diagnoses, and small cell lung cancers, which are more rare. “With non-small cell lung cancers, when you look under the microscope, the cells look large and elongated,” Sen says. “Small cell lung cancers make up approximately 15% of diagnoses, but it’s one of the most aggressive forms of, not just lung cancer, but all cancers.” Lung cancers present treatment challenges for several reasons, including diagnoses at late stages. So, researchers like Sen work every day to study the conditions, as well as new therapies that could improve outcomes for patients. “In our lab, we work to answer several questions,” Sen says. “How does cancer initiate, and once it does, how does it evolve from benign to highly metastatic? How does lung cancer develop resistance to treatment? How do cancer cells transform themselves and what are the drivers of these processes? Our goal is to create more durable benefits for the majority of patients.” Click here to learn more about lung cancer, including risks, symptoms and treatment options at The Ohio State University. To answer those questions, Sen and her OSUCCC – James colleagues use the latest techniques and technologies to increase understanding of lung cancer at its deepest levels. “It's not just a microscope. We do a lot of sequencing — looking at DNA, RNA and proteins,” she says. “We do a lot of Crispr screens and a lot of molecular cell biology.” That type of in-depth research has already led to advancements in lung cancer care, as well as promising new classes of treatment, including immunotherapy. “We study how to make immunotherapy better,” Sen says, “These treatments have really changed survival for people with cancer, but only a minority of lung cancer patients currently see durable benefits from immunotherapy.” To meet that challenge, Sen and her team study possible ways to combine immunotherapy with other treatments to increase effectiveness for lung cancer patients. “Our goal is to see how we can have more durable benefits, so we’re thinking about strategies with different drug combinations,” she says. “We’re looking into targets like DNA damage response inhibitors and epigenetic modifiers that could be combined with immunotherapy to make the responses better.” While a lot of progress has been made in the effort to improve lung cancer treatment, there’s a lot more that can be done. But, Sen is encouraged by new capabilities that are helping her team change our understanding of the conditions — the first step in developing new, life-saving therapies. “The more we understand, the more we learn how much we don't know,” she says. “But, we’re capturing the biology of cancer with a precision that we weren't able to before. That has literally led to a completely new form of understanding of cancer in general, and lung cancer in particular.” Click here to learn more about cancer immunotherapy at the OSUCCC – James.