First Steps

Burning questions
(continued)

"Our hypotheses is that cigarette smoke makes the lungs a more fertile environment for cancer," says Murin, an assistant professor of medicine. "It changes the immune function of the lungs and makes blood vessels more leaky."

The end result, according to Murin, is that "the body is less likely to fight off cancer cells."

With a grant from the American Lung Association, she hopes to find out if the risk of metastasis explains why women smokers who get breast cancer are more likely to die from it than are nonsmokers. If that's the case, it might offer important treatment clues to oncologists. And it might give women more impetus to kick the habit, especially if quitting smoking after diagnosis makes a difference in breast cancer survivability - a premise Murin plans to investigate.

Clarifying how smoking affects breast cancer's spread to the lungs is also important because breast cancer, while the most common cancer among women, is not the leading cancer killer. Lung cancer is.

"Women are in many ways are more frightened of breast cancer than lung cancer," Murin notes. "Everyone knows someone who has breast cancer. If we can let women know they're more likely to survive breast cancer if they don't smoke, hopefully it may motivate some women smokers to quit."

Murin checks in on respiratory patient Eleanor Beedy.