Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Northern Ireland (NI), with 1,360 people diagnosed each year with the illness. Among patients diagnosed with lung cancer during 2013-2017, one-year survival after diagnosis was 38.2%, while five-year survival was 15.9%. However, almost one in two (44.6%) patients died within 6 months of diagnosis.

Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) accounting for 2,586 new cases per year between 2019 and 2021. The annual incidence was 1,386 in men and 1,199 in females.

The LUNG SHOT project, led by Cancer Health Economist from Queen’s, Doctor Ethna McFerran, will bring leading experts and key stakeholders from NI and RoI together, to create a collaborative approach to tackling one of the islands most pressing public health challenges.

Despite the growing evidence that early detection through screening can significantly reduce mortality, neither region have yet funded a formal lung cancer screening programme.

This project, alongside two others led by Queen’s, have received significant investment of over €450k from the Health Research Board (HRB) through its All-Ireland NCI Cancer Consortium, a pilot scheme that is designed to stimulate cross border and transatlantic cancer research and innovation.

Dr Damien Bennett, Director of the NI Cancer Registry (NICR) at Queen’s will lead an All-Island Cancer Atlas, which will map the geographical distribution of cancers across the island of Ireland and examine variation by cancer type, socio-economic and demographic factors.

In addition, Professor Nick Orr, will lead ‘Empowering the high-throughput characterisation of non-coding genome mutations for cancer precision medicine’, which will develop and implement advanced laboratory techniques to study how certain genetic changes which don’t directly code for proteins may influence cancer risk.