Lung cancer researcher gets boost from flight attendants' group

Pran Datta, Ph.D., a Vanderbilt-Ingram member who is currently studying an important protein in cancer research, transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β), has received funding from the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute (FAMRI) to look for clues in the fight against lung cancer.

"We are looking for how TGF-β signaling is lost in lung cancer," Datta said. "In more than 77 percent of cases TGF-β type-2 reception is lost or very reduced and we're trying to understand why the receptor is lost." Datta has a three-year grant from FAMRI for $100,000 a year to continue his work.

Patty Young, a trustee with FAMRI, said supporting research like Datta's, that could help former flight attendants like her, is key to the organization's mission. The group was established as a result of a class action lawsuit brought against the tobacco companies on behalf of non-smoking flight attendants in Miami-Dade, Fla. Among other considerations, $300 million was awarded to form a scientific and medical research institute. "We're committed to funding research worldwide to cure diseases caused by exposure to tobacco smoke," Young said.

Young has made the fight against secondhand smoke exposure her life's mission. She flew for nearly 30 years on smoky planes. "We were the canaries in the coal mines," Young said. "When I started flying, I was as Pollyanna as you can get. I thought everything was just fabulous," she added. Then she started watching her friends die, all former flight attendants. "We were all non-smokers being murdered by secondhand smoke."

Lung cancer took the lives of both of her parents, but Young herself has been spared a diagnosis with the deadly disease, so far. She has been told by her physicians that she has the lungs of a long-term smoker. "I worry all the time. I never stop coughing. I have severe allergic reactions to tobacco smoke," Young said.

The advocate said she has strong words for tobacco smokers. "I say they have a profound responsibility first to those around them and then to themselves. Your tobacco addiction comes with great responsibility," Young said.

Until the war on tobacco has been won and cures for the diseases linked to tobacco smoke have been found, Young said her work and FAMRI's will continue. And Datta's research could unlock the answers Young and her colleagues, and so many others, have been waiting to hear. "We're trying to take this research from the lab or the bench to the bedside for the clinical benefit to patients," said Datta.