François Picard is pleased to welcome Siow-Ming Lee, Professor of Medical Oncology at the University College London and a specialist in lung cancer. “Lung cancer is not one cancer. There are many different types of lung cancer,” explains Lee. For decades, lung cancer has been closely associated with smoking, late diagnosis and poor survival prospects. Yet there is a broader revolution in cancer brewing: Medicine advances in molecular oncology, minimally invasive surgery and immunotherapy are fundamentally transforming both the understanding and treatment of the disease, including among patients who have never smoked.
Expressing cautious optimism about the reported success of Pope Leo's operation to remove cancer found in his lung, Lee emphasised the importance of early detection while acknowledging that the final pathology results would be essential to determining the long-term prognosis and any further treatment.
