NCI awards $15.5M for lung cancer screening

The U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded a five-year, $15.5 million grant to a multi-institutional group to improve the effectiveness of CT lung cancer screening and increase its accessibility for populations with disparities in the early diagnosis and treatment of the disease.

Part of the funding will go toward establishing the new Center for Research to Optimize Precision Lung Cancer Screening (CPLS), which will house a shared data repository for research on ways to prevent underuse, overuse, and misuse of CT lung cancer screening throughout the U.S.

Grant awardees include researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, the Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, Kaiser Permanente Hawaii, the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, and the Marshfield Clinic Health System in Wisconsin. Dr. Chyke Doubeni from the University of Pennsylvania and Debra Ritzwoller, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente will co-direct the center and its contribution to the Population-Based Research to Optimize the Screening Process (PROSPR) II initiative for lung, colon, and cervical cancer.