Felicia Lazure, PhD

Aging is a key cancer risk factor with over 60% of cancers occurring in people aged 65 and over. Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) mainly affects the elderly and often resists therapy, leading to cancer relapse. However, we still do not fully understand how aging impacts lung cancer development, in large part because most LUAD clinical trials have excluded elderly patients. This is a problem because cancer cells interact constantly with their environment and an aged lung is a markedly different environment than a young lung in its structure and function. This affects how lung cancer grows and responds to treatment. Our goal is to study how lung cancer evolves with age and use that knowledge to uncover new treatment targets that can be used to develop better, age-specific therapies for elderly lung cancer patients.