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Lung cancer is still the top cancer killer. But new developments are shifting what the future might hold for patients, as one man's cancer journey shows. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Stanford Medicine professor Bryant Lin helped found the school's Center for Asian Health, advocating for better care for lung cancer in particular. Then two years ago, Lin became a Stage 4 patient of the very disease he long crusaded against.
BRYANT LIN: Super ironic that I would be co-leading the center that supports research and education in this disease, and I get diagnosed myself.
NOGUCHI: Yet Lin tells students he considers himself lucky - even optimistic.
LIN: I think the future is really bright because we're creating all of these personalized, specialized precision therapeutics for lung cancer. My hope is if we're not able to cure lung cancer, we can at least turn it into a chronic disease.
NOGUCHI: There's been a lot of progress. But it has only begun to shift survival rates, which vary widely by stage of disease. For all stages of lung cancer, the rate has doubled over three decades, but the overall survival rate at five years is still only 30%. Lung cancer comes in many genetic forms and is historically hard to treat. But UCLA oncologist Jonathan Goldman says researchers are now developing more drugs that target malignancies based on their genetic profile.
JONATHAN GOLDMAN: Survival used to be under a year. And now it's often several years and sometimes many years.
NOGUCHI: Targeted medicines exist for about two-thirds of lung cancer cases. So Goldman says testing for the genetic subtype is key.
GOLDMAN: We can pick a drug that's really been developed for that type of cancer.
NOGUCHI: It was one of those drugs Professor-patient Bryant Lin initially began taking in May 2024, just three months after the Food and Drug Administration approved its use with chemotherapy.
LIN: I am a beneficiary of years of decades of research. Since I've been diagnosed, it's quite amazing how quick - how rapid our advances have been occurring.
NOGUCHI: Powerful new drugs are one thing. Affording them is another. Even Lin, with his elite education and status, faces insurance hurdles getting expensive treatments covered.
LIN: Oral drugs and the IV drugs - they're hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you had to pay out of pocket, I don't know too many people who could afford to pay out of pocket.
NOGUCHI: Last fall, the initial drugs stopped working for Lin. Luckily, regulators had just approved another drug combination - an antibody to activate the immune system and another pill targeting his cancer's specific mutation. Lin still teaches, travels and advises the Susan Wojcicki Foundation for lung cancer. He says these new therapies have given him more life and one of better quality.
LIN: And my symptoms are really well-controlled. I can live my life. I can speak. I don't think I've coughed once during our conversation.
NOGUCHI: What's more, scientific progress is starting to compound. Advances with other cancers may also get traction against lung cancer. One promising example may eventually include customized mRNA vaccines. Early data suggest promise reenlisting the immune system to attack cancers.
LIN: I've been investigating that for myself - personalized mRNA vaccine.
NOGUCHI: Lin's professional focus remains advocating for better screening, which only 18% of high-risk people get. He wants technology to develop alternatives to low-dose CT scans, the current standard.
LIN: For colon cancer, we have lots of different modes of screening. And so we hope to be able to enable that for lung cancer.
NOGUCHI: Lin himself is like a trapeze artist, grasping from one treatment to the next. A fellow professor with cancer urged him to hang on.
LIN: He says, like, hey. You only need to survive long enough until the next new treatment comes out, the next new treatment. And that's been the case for me. I - you know, all of this gives me hope. But yes. Absolutely. The odds are against me.
NOGUCHI: Sadly, days after we spoke, Lin got news. His latest scans show his lung tumors grew. Now, there's yet another recently approved antibody drug to consider, as well as clinical trials. Meanwhile, Lin also takes his wife and teenage sons to baseball games. They tinker with a classic seafoam-green Smith Corona manual typewriter Lin bought to commemorate an upcoming book.
LIN: We stayed up late when we got the typewriter, just banging away and making the noises and the dings and, you know, writing crazy things on the paper.
NOGUCHI: Life still must be lived, he says, with a bit of silliness.
Yuki Noguchi, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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