Spira Lauded for Leading-Edge Research Efforts

BUSM’s Avrum Spira, MD, MSc, Associate Professor of Medicine, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Director, Translational Bioinformatics Program, Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Boston University is the recipient of the “Uniting Against Lung Cancer Caine Halter Hope Now Award” for Lung Cancer Research.

The annual Hope Now Award is given to the research lab and leader showing the most progress in lung cancer research during a one-year period. Dr. Spira will receive $25,000 to apply towards lung cancer research.

Dr. Spira leads BU’s Pulmonomics Lab. Using an array of bioinformatic approaches, including experimental, statistical, and computational methods, Dr. Spira’s lab analyzes gene expression patterns in the airway and in lung tissue to non-invasively detect patients at high risk for lung cancer. Earlier this year, Dr. Spira and his colleagues identified a potential biomarker for early detection of lung cancer that can distinguish between smokers with and without disease, and reported a potential treatment for these patients that can reverse the changes in gene activity. This work represents Dr. Spira’s continuing efforts to use advanced bioinformatics tools towards the early detection of lung cancer and to seek out novel treatments to improve patients’ quality of life.

Uniting Against Lung Cancer seeks to fund innovative and novel research, as well as to support promising young researchers, allowing the scientific leaders of tomorrow to devote their efforts to curing lung cancer. Caine Halter was a healthy, 45-year old non-smoker whose life was taken by lung cancer in August 2007 after a valiant 13-month battle. Inspired by his courage and grace, Caine’s family and friends are committed to raising funds for lung cancer research in his honor, so that others diagnosed may have a fighting chance to live. In 2008, The Caine Halter Fund for Lung Cancer Research began sponsorship of the Hope Now Award, which is now known as the Caine Halter Hope Now Award.