The Lung Cancer Awareness Month (LCAM) will kick in November this year.

For the second year running, the National Cancer Centre Singapore will lead in the launch of the public education campaign to raise public awareness of lung cancer and to encourage earlier diagnosis. Other joint organisers are the Health Promotion Board and Singapore Cancer Society.

LCAM will use a soft approach throughout November to educate members of the public the importance of stamping out smoking and reducing lung cancer mortality.

Upcoming activities for the event will include conducting professional education for family practitioners on the latest developments in screening, diagnosis and treatments; and reaching to the public to spread messages on the harmful effects of smoking. With 18 people dying of lung cancer every week, the latest figures show it is the deadliest form of the disease in Singapore. Recent trends also shows that the incidence of smoking among Singaporean women has been rising – 6.6 per cent of women aged between 18 to 29 years were smokers last year, up from 5.2 per cent in 1998.

A CME interactive seminar on lung cancer will be held in September 2005 to highlight the latest medical research and treatment options. The seminar is open to GPs and specialists.

National Cancer Centre - Combined Scientific Meeting(CSM) Oral Presentation Competition held on 8 July 2005

In the recent CSM oral competition held in NCC, two winning presenters were singled out for conducting prospective trials that show promise in medical breakthroughs in cancer treatments.

Winner Dr Choo Su Ping and her team studied in a prospective trial the use of electroaccupuncture for refractory acute emesis due to doxorubicin-containing chemotherapy. The trial aims to evaluate the efficacy of acupuncture in preventing anthracycline-based chemotherapy-related nausea and emesis refractory to combination a chemo drugs 5HT3-antagonist and dexametheasone. The study concluded that electroacupuncture is well-tolerated and effective as an adjunct in reducing chemotherapy-related nausea and emesis.

Another winner, Dr Alvin Eng presented a paper on a study of the genomic aberrations in gastric adenocarcinoma using microarray comparative genomic hybridisation. Dr Eng examined the sequence of changes in the genomic signature of gastric mucaosa as it transits from normal to adenocarcinoma. This would be the first step towards identifying key genes that are involved in the start of carcinogenesis in gastric mucosa. The study concluded that gastric carcinogenesis may be initiated earlier than was previously thought -- with detectable losses and gains in the genomic signature of histologically normal adjacent gastric mucosa from patients with proven gastric cancer.

Both winners will represent the Centre to present their papers at the Combined Scientific Meeting to be held on 5-6 November at Raffles City.