Lung cancer is a deadly form of cancer which is diagnosed less frequently than breast cancer but that kills more people annually, according to the American Cancer Society. “And we hope through this research we will make it so other people won’t have to suffer the way Tom did.”

“We believe strongly that IU is the finest place you can be treated for cancer,” said Julie Wood, Tom’s wife of 51 years. But IU’s Larry Einhorn, MD, prescribed a series of treatments that extended Wood’s life for nearly four years. Elsewhere, Wood had been given six months to live. The family’s support follows their experiences during Tom Wood’s treatment for lung cancer at the IU Simon Cancer Center. Turchi, PhD.Ĭombined, the Wood family’s gifts to IU School of Medicine total $3.5 million.

The Wood Family Foundation’s gift follows its 2011 endowment of a chair in lung cancer research that is held by laboratory researcher John J. No matter how great of an idea you have, if you don’t have the finances to run the experiment, it doesn’t matter.” “I can’t even begin to tell you what a game changer this is,” Hanna said. It will foster collaboration with other lung cancer researchers, encourage junior investigators to test their ideas and serve as a lever to secure additional grants. The endowment, created in memory of the automotive executive Tom Wood, will fund new treatments for lung cancer from conception to clinical trials. Hanna’s efforts to solve lung cancer got a big boost recently when he was named the first holder of the Tom and Julie Wood Family Foundation Chair in Lung Cancer Clinical Research. But now the successes are coming much more rapidly.”

“It’s been 50 years of forming the outer border and now we’ve sort of got that next layer. “That’s what’s happening right now,” said Hanna, an Indiana University School of Medicine professor who’s been working on the puzzle for nearly two decades. But like sticking with a puzzle, persistence has been rewarded and the pieces are starting to fit into place. At times, a solution has seemed impossible to reach. The pursuit of a cure for one of the deadliest forms of cancer has been slow and tedious. But when it comes to solving lung cancer, Nasser Hanna, MD, says the image is useful in describing the current pace of progress towards a cure. The jigsaw puzzle – a complex picture carved into a thousand pieces – is an overused metaphor for the pursuit of a cancer cure. Photo: Tom Wood (right) hands over the car keys to customers at his Pontiac dealership

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