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In the Spring of 2015, more than 35 of the nation¡¯s leading cancer researchers joined an unprecedented effort to improve lung cancer treatment. The Lung Cancer Dream Team, as it¡¯s known, is specifically focused on a difficult-to-treat lung cancer with a common gene mutation called KRAS, which occurs in 20-30% of lung cancers.

¡°Not only is this a very common problem -- and therefore the results will impact many people -- but strategies to target KRAS can be applied to patients with other cancers [that have this mutation],¡± says team co-leader Jedd Wolchok, MD, PhD, a researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

When we wrote in about the Lung Cancer Dream Team in 2015, the scientists were just getting started. Here¡¯s a recap of who they are and what they¡¯ve been doing since then.

The scientists:?Dream Team members are experts from 8 top cancer centers who received a combined?$20 million grant?from the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ Cancer Society and Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), a nonprofit organization started by the Entertainment Industry Foundation in 2008 that focuses on research collaborations.

The strategy:?Researchers are combining their unique specialties and merging two highly promising treatment approaches: targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Targeted therapy researchers are looking for ways to destroy KRAS mutated cells in lung cancer. Immunotherapy researchers are investigating ways to help a patient¡¯s immune system better fight their cancer. Scientists have looked at both treatment approaches individually, but Dream Team researchers believe integrating these approaches could be key to advancing progress.

The research:?Dream Team members started swiftly with specific plans for 10 different clinical trials. They are actively enrolling patients in 3 open clinical trials and anticipate to open 3 additional trials in the first quarter of 2017. ¡°We are also conducting a large study using tumors from patients receiving immunotherapy to determine important biomarkers of response,¡± Wolchok says. ¡°With a goal of collecting 1,000 tumors, this is likely the largest such effort and will be a highly impactful dataset and resource of many physicians and scientists.¡±