Kentucky records the highest rate of new lung cancer cases in the United States. This fact makes every advance at the University of Louisville (U of L) matter more than ever. The school is steadily building a stronger presence in the fight against the disease that hits the state hardest.
Early this month, philanthropic organisation The Gibbs Foundation gave the university US$4.5 million for lung research in the School of Medicine. The gift completes a five-year pledge the foundation made in 2022. That earlier promise committed the organisation to multi-year support, and the latest sum turns the funding into a lasting resource. It will support ongoing work on lung disease, better ways to care for patients and the training of future researchers.
Part of the money will help advance breath analysis technology. The method is the same as that employed in OneBreath, the test created by Breath Diagnostics. This company spun out from the institution with U of L surgery professor Victor van Berkel co-founding it. OneBreath captures compounds in a single exhaled breath and analyses them with laboratory equipment to detect molecular signs linked to disease or risk. Researchers plan to use it to predict which heart surgery patients face a higher chance of developing pneumonia afterwards. The FDA recently granted the platform Breakthrough Device Designation for this exact purpose, giving the company priority guidance as it moves the test toward wider clinical use.
“Longer term, this technology will help emergency physicians rapidly distinguish conditions like pneumonia, emphysema, heart failure and pulmonary embolism,” said U of L President Gerry Bradley.
The new funding gift — which will also advance a negative-pressure system for infected lungs called ex vivo perfusion and transplant research — builds on other recent steps that raise the university’s profile in this field. In late August, U of L Health finished building its US$25 million Brown Cancer Center in Bullitt County. The centre opens to patients later this month and will treat lung cancer among its first cases, while also housing clinical trials, specialist care and research aimed at rural communities across Kentucky. At the end of March, University of Louisville scientist Kavitha Yaddanapudi received a National Institutes of Health award valued at roughly US$353,000 for the coming year to study ways of overcoming treatment resistance in non-small cell lung cancer.
Van Berkel, whose earlier research helped launch the breath test now receiving greater support, also appeared on the university’s Science Behind the Headlines podcast in November. There he educated listeners about Kentucky’s high lung cancer rates, the value of early checks and advances in surgical techniques.
Taken together, these recent developments show how the University of Louisville is expanding its role. For a state that still leads the nation in new lung cancer cases and ranks second for adult smoking, these moves offer practical hope that greater awareness, better detection, treatment and training will reach more people sooner.
Read more: Breath Diagnostics advances pre-op pneumonia screening with FDA breakthrough designation
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