Tennis Lab

Cancer Prevention Science

The Tennis lab is primarily focused on translational lung cancer prevention research, including mechanisms of chemoprevention and interception of premalignant lesion progression.  Lung cancer continues to be the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, with most cancers diagnosed in former smokers.  While avoidance of tobacco abuse is clearly the strongest deterrent of lung cancer, chemoprevention in former smokers may be a more successful intervention than treatment of established lung cancers.  The current ratio of lung cancer treatment clinical trials to lung cancer chemoprevention clinical trials is about 250:1. Even with this focus on treatment, 5-year survival for lung cancer has remained around 15% for decades.  With this limited improvement in lung cancer treatment, we need effective chemoprevention strategies.

We have published work on markers for targeted application of lung cancer chemoprevention and are interested in correlative studies related to chemoprevention trials.  Frizzled 9 is a transmembrane receptor key for activity of prostacyclin chemoprevention and may be a marker for response to chemoprevention in the lung.  We are currently working to understand regulation of pulmonary Frizzled 9 transcription and translation, the role of Frizzled 9 in progression of premalignant and malignant lung lesions, and the interaction between Frizzled 9 and the prostacyclin analogue iloprost.