A 13x Return on a 200K Investment for Lung Cancer Research

This is a paid post contributed by a Patch Community Partner. The views expressed in this post are the author's own, and the information presented has not been verified by Patch.

New York City surgeon-scientist Dr. Jonathan Villena-Vargas is tackling one of lung cancer's most urgent mysteries: why the disease returns in nearly half of patients even after a successful surgery and how to stop it.

Subscribe

"The honest truth is that you can do the perfect operation and about half these patients will have a recurrence, usually in a couple of years after the surgery," says Dr. Villena-Vargas, a cardiothoracic surgeon and assistant professor at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

To help answer that question, Lung Cancer Foundation of America (LCFA) awarded Dr. Villena-Vargas a $200,000 grant in 2023. It's part of the foundation's Early Career Researcher (ECR) grant program, aimed at speeding up lung cancer research to get new treatments to patients as soon as possible. The program invests in the most promising young lung cancer research scientists. It gives them the support they need to transform today's innovative ideas into tomorrow's life-saving breakthroughs.

This year, LCFA and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) are marking August 1, World Lung Cancer Day, by announcing the recipients of the 2026 Early Career Researcher grants.

"Supporting early-career investigators is not just a strategic priority. It is a necessity for the future of oncology," says Kim Norris, co-founder and president of LCFA. "By investing in these researchers, we are accelerating the pace of discovery and ensuring that promising ideas…can move from the laboratory to the clinic, where they are needed most."

Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer, claiming a life in the United States every four minutes. The hope lies in lung cancer research, which has resulted in new treatments that have doubled the survival rate.

"It's incredibly difficult now to get the funding sources that we used to get," says Dr. Villena-Vargas. "Just because of the way things are in this current environment."

For Dr. Villena-Vargas, that initial LCFA grant helped fund a lab to test whether lymph nodes can play a role in fighting tumors.

"What my research is really showing is that you have to look at the lymph node or elsewhere outside of the tumor to the body's overall immune health and how that can actually help these cancer patients." Dr. Villena-Vargas says.

Preliminary data show a major immune response in certain lymph nodes. That data and evidence helped Dr. Villena-Vargas secure more funding to continue his research.

"The initial $200K LCFA grant has been foundational," says Dr. Villena-Vargas. "The subsequent National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) funding…represents hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional support that built directly on the preliminary data generated from that seed grant."

In fact, LCFA's Early Career Research Grant Program is known for a remarkable "multiplier effect," currently calculated at 13X return on investment. Funding the first spark for transformative science, the program has awarded 25 grants totaling $4.6 million. That funding has grown into more than $50 million in additional grants from other organizations building on LCFA-supported research.

"The grant has been transformational for my research program and career. I'm grateful for the foundation it provided," says Dr. Villena-Vargas. "If we want those fresh ideas, if we want that passion from the young researchers, you have to support them in any way you can."

To learn more or to donate, visit Lung Cancer Foundation of America's website, lcfamerica.org, or the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, iaslc.org.

This post is an advertorial piece contributed by a Patch Community Partner, a local brand partner. To learn more, click here.