Dr. Michele Cote, a WSU assistant professor at the Karmanos Cancer Institute, recently was awarded the National Lung

Cancer Partnership and the LUNGevity Foundation's Career Development Award.

The two-year, $100,000 award will support Dr. Cote as she pursues research investigating what the role of estrogen-related tumor characteristics are in predicting sex-specific survival after a lung cancer diagnosis. According to Dr. Cote, women have slightly better survival than men, suggesting that hormones might play a role in lung cancer progression.

"The identification of molecular and genetic profiles associated with survival will help target treatment advances in hopes of improving survival for a cancer in which little progress has been realized," Dr. Cote said.

National Lung Cancer Partnership, founded in 2001, is the only national lung cancer organization founded by physicians and researchers and focused on understanding how the disease affects women differently than men. The LUNGevity Foundation, established in 2000 by seven Chicago-area lung cancer survivors, is the only organization in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to funding lung cancer research.