Suzuki Receives 2023 AstraZeneca Lung Cancer Research Award

The Board of Directors of The Thoracic Surgery Foundation has named Kei Suzuki, MD, the recipient of the 2023 AstraZeneca Lung Cancer Research Award. Suzuki was recognized for his project, “Single-cell RNA sequence profiling of tumor-immune microenvironment for precision therapy in resectable lung cancer.” 

“This funding is crucial to take the research to the next step,” said Kei Suzuki, MD in thoracic surgery at Inova Schar Cancer Institute. “We hope the findings will lead to more important questions that we can answer in the next study.”

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Recent advances in immunotherapy have proven to be effective in patients with advanced lung cancer. Immunotherapy is a type of treatments that tweaks the immune system to attack cancerous cells. A recent study has found that pairing immunotherapy with chemotherapy prior to surgery improves survival for patients with early-stage lung cancer as well. Another study pointed to the success of removing smaller section of the lung for small tumors (≤ 2 cm) compared to standard of care, which requires removal of an entire lobe of the lung.

New options are exciting but one old problem lingers. The treatment chosen, whether immunotherapy or reduced surgery, hinges on information obtained from imaging scans and a tiny tissue sample collected during a biopsy. With this limited data, a clinician must determine the nature of the cancer and how aggressive it may be. For lung cancer, one in four patients will experience a recurrence of the disease in five years, even when the cancer is caught at an early stage. To truly determine the best treatment option for each patient, there is a need to better understand the tumor biology before treatment is initiated.

Currently, cancer specialists assess cancer aggressiveness based on three factors — tumor size, spread of cancer cells to the lymph nodes or to other parts of the body. Early-stage cancerous tumors are small, reducing the chance that the cells have spread to the lymph nodes, but these characteristics are not enough to predict the clinical behavior of cancer.

“There is still so much we don’t know about the biology of the tumor and the tumor microenvironment,” said Suzuki. “We need to answer critical questions to identify who might best respond to immunotherapy compared to resection alone or who may only need a small portion of the lung removed.”

 In his study, Suzuki is addressing this knowledge gap by focusing on how the cancer responds to the body’s immune system. When the immune system identifies the foreign cancer cells, it initiates an attack. In response cancer alter the tumor microenvironment to produce more favorable conditions for growth. By assessing the interplay between the two adversaries, Suzuki hopes to gain a greater understanding of the aggressive disposition of the cancer.

In this effort, Suzuki is using single-sequence RNA sequencing to assess cell types from a small tissue biopsy. He plans to compare the results from cells obtained before treatment and in the tumor after removal to understand how the cancer cells behaved at these different time steps.

Precision techniques , like the RNA sequencing, is personalizing cancer care. Suzuki hopes the results from the study will improve predictions by understanding a person’s unique immune signature.

“This is a long-term process,” he said. “We are hoping to learn from pretreatment biopsies to improve treatment selection for future lung cancer patients.”

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons is collaborating with the AstraZeneca to establish the AstraZeneca Lung Cancer Research Award. This grant is for cardiothoracic surgeons, pulmonologists, or research or physician scientists who are seeking initial support and recognition for their original research project. The purpose of the award is to reduce the burden of lung disease through the advancement of clinical, transitional and/or basic scientific research. The recognition includes a cash award of up to $50,000 per year for up to two years.

Suzuki appreciates the continued support of leadership at Inova Schar Cancer Institute, including Michael Weyant, MD, director of thoracic surgery program at Inova Schar and John Deeken, MD, president of Inova Schar Cancer Institute.

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