Lung cancer is the most common type of cancer. Despite the improvement in treatments, about six in 10 people with lung cancer die within one year of being diagnosed.

More than 80 percent of lung cancer cases are attributed to smoking. However, like Dana Reeve, one of five women diagnosed never smoked. (Sources: AP, American Cancer Society, and World Health Organization)  Five years after the cancer is found, the survival rate is 49 percent when the cancer is confined to the lung. Survival rates drop to 16 percent if the lung cancer has spread within the chest, and down to 2 percent if it has spread to other organs.

The UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center is part of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.  UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center is a matrix Cancer Center at one of the nation’s premier public universities. There are several ways to help via the Lineberger website.  You can support Cancer research, treatment and prevention at many levels online there is no minimum or max.  Any gift over $1,000 annually (July 1-June 30) qualifies you for membership in the Lineberger Club and the Co-Founders of the Medical Foundation; gifts over $2,000 additionally qualify you for the University’s Chancellor’s Club.

As part of an elite group of NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers, the mission of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center is to reduce cancer incidence and death in North Carolina and the nation through research, treatment, training, and outreach.

• UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center is one of only 41 NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the nation

• The only public comprehensive cancer center in North Carolina, treating patients from all 100 counties in the state.

• Ranked by US News & World Report as one of the top 50 cancer hospitals in the United States in 2008

• Ranked in the top 15 institutions nationally in cancer research funding with substantial programs in basic, clinical, and population sciences

• Home to internationally recognized research programs, including SPORE grants for breast cancer and gastrointestinal cancer

• NIH funding led to one of the largest ever population-based case-control studies of breast cancer examining racial disparities

• UNC Lineberger has one of seven cancer nanotechnology grants (CCNEs) and one of 11 Cancer Genome Atlas Grants

• Over 105,000 patient visits in 2007 including approximately 2,600 new patients with 651 patients accrued to therapeutic clinical trials

• Nationally recognized training programs for the next generation of medical professionals

• UNC Lineberger provides a multidisciplinary approach, giving patients the benefit of many specialists in one place

• UNC Lineberger’s growth led to construction of a new 380,000 sf North Carolina Cancer Hospital that will open in November 2009

• Ongoing community research on minority disparities in nutrition, colon and breast cancer screening, and palliative care

• Home of the Carolina Community Network, a program that aims to reduce breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers in adult African-Americans

• The Center’s 285 members are drawn from more than 25 departments across the UNC campus and hold more than $186 million yearly in grant funding.

• UNC Lineberger employs 1120 staff The new N.C. Cancer Hospital, opening November 2009, and the Physicians Office Building, opened July 2008.

UNC Lineberger print newsletter - Cancer Lines

NON-SMALL CELL LUNG CANCER

SMALL CELL LUNG CANCER