As Lung Cancer Awareness Month draws to a close, we’re taking a moment to reflect on a global movement that once again united researchers, clinicians, patients, and advocates throughout November. Each year brings fresh urgency and new breakthroughs and 2025 has been no exception.

The Global Challenge

The 2025 Lung Cancer Awareness Month theme is “This is Lung Cancer”, a campaign designed to challenge outdated perceptions and stigma by highlighting progress in diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship. It encourages people to seek help earlier and reinforces a critical truth: early diagnosis saves lives. When lung cancer is detected at an earlier stage, treatment options are broader, outcomes are significantly better, and patients have a far greater chance of long-term survival. The campaign also emphasises that lung cancer can affect anyone, regardless of smoking history.

Lung cancer remains the world’s most common cancer and its leading cause of cancer-related death, with nearly 2.5 million diagnoses and more than 1.8 million lives lost in 2022. These numbers reflect a hard fact: lung cancer is often detected too late. Symptoms rarely present in the early stages, leaving both patients and clinicians racing against time.

Yet, despite strong efforts from advocacy groups, uptake of lung cancer screening remains low among at-risk groups, and current national guidelines still exclude a significant portion of people who go on to develop the disease. A major study by Northwestern Medicine of nearly 1,000 lung cancer patients found that only 35% would have qualified for screening under the existing US Preventive Services Task Force criteria, leaving nearly two-thirds, disproportionately women and never-smokers, missed entirely.

This gap in eligibility is one of the reasons almost 80% of lung cancer cases are still diagnosed at advanced stages, where five-year survival drops to around 10%. As the Washington Post[1] recently highlighted, the growing population of never-smokers developing lung cancer remains ‘invisible’ to current screening guidelines, underscoring the need for more inclusive and accessible early-detection pathways.

This year’s global awareness message couldn’t be clearer: anyone can get lung cancer. Advocacy organisations around the world are continuing to dismantle outdated stigma and highlight a crucial reality, risk factors vary, cases among never-smokers are rising, and early detection must be accessible to all.

The Early Detection Revolution

In 2025, the field of oncology has seen transformative strides in early lung cancer detection, shifting from reliance on low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scans alone toward integrated, personalised approaches that leverage biomarkers, artificial intelligence (AI), and non-invasive testing.

These approaches move beyond traditional imaging by looking for disease-specific signals in the blood, enabling earlier intervention, with fewer false positives and greater patient convenience.

Cizzle Biotechnology Holdings PLC’s Year of Milestones

For Cizzle Biotechnology, this has been a defining year in our mission to transform lung cancer detection through our proprietary CIZ1B biomarker blood test, which has demonstrated 95% sensitivity for early-stage disease.

This year, we delivered several major steps forward:

• North American Expansion – Having completed our exclusive licensing agreement with Cizzle Bio Inc. for the USA and Canada, our licensing partners have signed their first contracts with commercial clinical laboratories to launch our biomarker test following CLIA certification, opening the door to one of the world’s largest healthcare markets.
• UK Healthcare Engagement – We signed a Letter of Intent with a major UK laboratory provider serving the National Health Service, which may lead to an exclusive UK partnership and co-branded rollout across NHS and private markets in the UK. This underscores our commitment to making early lung cancer detection accessible nationally.
• Clinical Validation at Leading Centres – Our selection by the Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida marked a pivotal milestone, the first major clinical evaluation of the CIZ1B biomarker in patients with suspicious lung nodules.
• Advancing the Science – We continue to collaborate with the University of York, driving innovation and creating new IP for the CIZ1B biomarker.

Looking Ahead

With scientific innovation, clinical evaluation, and commercial partnerships aligning, 2026 is set to be a transformative year for blood-based lung cancer screening. Using biomarker-driven tests like ours offer a powerful complementary pathway to LDCT scanning helping provide earlier, more accurate detection.

As this awareness month closes, we’re reminded that progress is born from persistence, partnership, and purpose. The breakthroughs emerging today offer hope for tomorrow’s patients, and Cizzle remains committed to leading that change.

One test. Earlier detection. More lives saved.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/11/24/lung-cancer-screening-guidelines/