Giving Compass' Take:

• In this story from Fred Hutch News Service, author Jake Siegel highlights the efforts of Dr. Guang-Shing Cheng, who is researching early detection of the the deadly lung disease BOS.

• How can the nonprofit sector support efforts by individuals like Dr. Cheng? What next steps might Dr. Cheng take, and what resources would be of use to her?

• To learn how cancer patients might be helped as researchers learn how organs heal themselves, click here.

BOS is rare. It’s only seen in about 5 percent of the roughly 9,000 patients who undergo allogenic bone marrow transplant each year, [Dr. Guang-Shing] Cheng said. During these life-saving treatments, patients undergo chemotherapy to destroy their diseased bone marrow. Then, a donor’s healthy blood-forming stem cells are given directly into the patient’s bloodstream.

The most well-established risk factor for BOS is chronic graft-versus-host disease, or GVHD. Chronic GVHD is a common side effect of bone marrow and stem cell transplantation where the donor immune cells (the “graft”) attack the patient’s healthy organs in addition to the cancer — in this case, the lungs.

The underlying biology of BOS remains poorly understood. And no one really knows how to identify which patients with GVHD are most at-risk. To help unravel those mysteries, Cheng will collaborate with colleagues across the Hutch, including Drs. Geoffrey Hill, an expert in transplantation biology and GVHD, and Michael Boeckh, an expert in infectious complications of transplant.

With Hill, Cheng will try to pinpoint the molecular pathways that lead to the disease. Meanwhile, a growing body of evidence suggests that certain viral infections might predispose patients to later lung complications. Cheng and Boeckh will be the first to study those links in a prospective way.

But above all, Cheng will keep tabs on how her patients are doing and ask questions of the data: Was this week’s dip in lung function just a blip, caused by a cold or fatigue? Or is it something more ominous? If she does detect a drop, she can flag it for the patient’s care provider to investigate.

Read the full article about thedeadly lung disease by Jake Siegel at Fred Hutch News Service.