GO2 for Lung Cancer’s research programs help find lifesaving treatments and cures. Our dedication to lung cancer research spans the continuum of lung cancer care, from early detection to treatment and survivorship. And we’re not accepting the lung cancer landscape the way it is right now.

As part of our mission to confront lung cancer through innovative research, we provide support to trailblazers in the lung cancer space, pushing the envelope for the next generation of diagnostic tools and treatments. GO2 for Lung Cancer research grants help identify and fund innovative research that is making a difference in our quest to live in a world without lung cancer. Previous grant recipients have distinguished themselves by conducting pioneering research on topics such as early detection and screening, novel biomarker identification, women’s sexual health, treatments targeting the tumor microenvironment, and much more.

Through these grants, we have encouraged—and continue to encourage—the best and brightest to join us in confronting lung cancer.

Young Innovators Team Awards (YITA)

Our Young Innovators Team Award supported research with potential for clinical impact on lung cancer. Launched in 2014 in collaboration with the Van Auken Private Foundation, the award aimed to create an innovative funding mechanism to support novel, transdisciplinary, and translational team research. This research grant identified brilliant, young, “out-of-the-box" thinkers who collaboratively delivered a meaningful and measurable result in helping us confront lung cancer.

The Young Innovators Team Award provided a grant of up to $250,000 per team to cover direct research costs over a 2–3-year period. Each team had at least two young innovators from nonprofit academic research centers who proposed to conduct first-in-field research with a high probability of near-term benefit to young cancer patients.

YITA has funded researchers in patient-oriented topic areas such as:

• Early detection and screening of lung cancer using novel, validated biomarkers
• Targeting the tumor microenvironment with combination strategies
• Examining biomarker responses to immunotherapies
• Causative factors of lung cancer in non-smokers
• Identifying and targeting specific underlying genomic abnormalities in small-cell lung cancer (SCLC)

Our Young Investigators

We proudly partnered with ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation on the Young Investigators Program to support the work of promising young lung cancer researchers. Grants have been awarded to study topics such as why some patients respond better to radiation than others, whether mutations in lung cancer tumors can be identified through a person’s breath, and other innovative research projects. Through this grant, we’ve encouraged the best and brightest to choose lung cancer as their field of study—and to help us confront the disease.

• Purpose:
  
  • This award honors experts in the field for their outstanding contributions to scientific research, treatment, and caregiving for lung cancer.

• Awardees: ‍
  
  • 2023 - David Carbone, MD, PhD, Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the James Thoracic Center at The Ohio State University Medical Center. Co-director of the Translational Immuno-Oncology Program at the Pelotonia Institute for Immuno-Oncology ‍
    
  • 2022 - Rafael Rosell, Past Director of the Cancer Biology and Precision Medicine Program at the Catalan Institute of Oncology, Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol; Chief Scientific Officer, Chairman and Founder of Pangaea Oncology SL ‍
  • 2021 – Heather Wakelee, MD,FASCO, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Oncology at Stanford University and Deputy Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute. ‍
  • 2020 – Charles Swanton, MD, PhD, FRCP, FMedSci, FRS senior group leader at the Francis Crick Institute ‍
  • 2019 – Solange Peters, MD, Head of Medical Oncology and Chair of Thoracic Oncology at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) in Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 2018 – Vassiliki A. Papadimitrakopoulou, MD, Chief of Thoracic Medical Oncology, Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
  • 2017 – Frances A. Shepherd, MD, FRCPC, Senior Staff Physician, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre; Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine
  • 2016 – Giorgio Vittorio Scagliotti, MD, Professor of Oncology, University of Torino; Head of the Department of Oncology and Chief of the Division of Medical Oncology, San Luigi Hospital, Torino, Italy
  • 2015 – Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine
  • 2014 – Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Ensign Professor of Medicine and Chief of Medical Oncology, Yale Cancer Center
  • 2013 – Tony Mok, D., Professor in the Department of Clinical Oncology, Chinese University of Hong Kong in Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong
  • 2012 – Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, Director of the Thoracic Oncology Clinical Program and Associate Director for Clinical Research, Colorado University Cancer Center
  • 2011 – William Pao, D., PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Research; Director, Personalized Cancer Medicine, Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center
  • 2010 – David R. Gandara, MD, Associate Director, Clinical Research, UC Davis Cancer Center
  • 2009 – Harvey Pass, D., BA, Director of the Division of Thoracic Surgery and Chief of Thoracic Surgery, New York University Medical Center
  • 2008 – Paul Bunn, Jr. MD, Principal Investigator and Director, University of Colorado Cancer Center

Women and Lung Cancer Research Grant (2022)

• Purpose:
  This grant funded an expert, multi-disciplinary research team to deploy an explanatory sequential mixed methods design to understand the perspectives, experiences, and concerns regarding fertility and sexual health of pre-menopausal women with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and melanoma who are receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors in the adjuvant setting.  

• Awardee:
  Dr. Narjust Florez, Associate Director of the Cancer Care Equity Program; Thoracic Medical Oncologist at the Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center

Momentum Research Award: Defeating Lung Cancer in Women (2016)

• Purpose:
  
  • This $250,000 award was our first joint award in collaboration with the American Lung Association (ALA). It supported novel, innovative, and translational research with the potential of high clinical impact for an early career scientist investigating the unique burden of lung cancer on women.

• Awardee:
  David Shackelford, David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles
  Project title: “Targeting cancer metabolism in therapy-resistant EGFR-mutant lung cancer.”

Clinical Trial Innovation Prize (2016)

• Purpose:
  
  • In 2015-2016 GO2 for Lung Cancer (previously the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation), held a unique, international crowdsourcing change to solve problems plaguing the oncology clinical medicine space. This award was aimed at identifying breakthrough ways to increase cancer patient enrollment in oncology clinical trials.

• Multiple prizes were awarded to innovators who rose to the challenge.