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The one hundred honoree: LUNGstrong

Donor Story

The one hundred honoree: LUNGstrong

by
Mass General Giving

LUNGstrong founder Diane Legg has lived with lung cancer for 11 years—six more years than 85 percent of people struck by the often-stigmatized disease.

Diane has used that time to raise her three sons with her husband David and to become a tireless fundraiser and advocate for leading-edge lung cancer research. As co-director of the New England chapter of the Lung Cancer Alliance, she launched “Shine a Light on Lung Cancer,” the largest international awareness event for the disease.

In 2011, she and David founded LUNGstrong, a nonprofit organization with the sole purpose of providing unrestricted funding to lung cancer researchers, allowing them the freedom to think “out of the box” in pursuit of potentially transformative treatments. To date, LUNGstrong has raised $1.8 million to support lung cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, under the leadership of Pasi Jänne, MD, PhD, director of the Lowe Center of Thoracic Oncology, and at the Mass General Cancer Center, under the leadership of Jeffrey Engelman, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Thoracic Oncology and Molecular Therapeutics.

“LUNGstrong has made a big impact on our research in the thoracic group as well as on the community that our patients form together,” says Lecia Sequist, MD, MPH, an oncologist in the Center for Thoracic Oncology. “Not only have their donations been helpful in starting the patient-derived model system, but our staff and many of our patients and families have come together to bond over our common goal of ending lung cancer at annual LUNGstrong events.”