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"Lung cancer has become a poster child for how research can make a difference in patients' lives," said Marc Ladanyi, M.D., chief of molecular diagnostics and director of the diagnostic molecular pathology laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in accepting this year's Caine Halter Hope Now Award at the fundraiser. The evening's other award winner, science writer Mark Roth of the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, said he was inspired to write a series on lung cancer in part by colleagues who had succumbed to the disease--including one who ran marathons and was a non-smoker.

The award presented to Roth, the Joanie Award for exceptional journalism about lung cancer, was named after Joan Scarangello, a journalist and non-smoker who lost her own battle with the disease at age 47. Since its founding in 2001 as "Joan's Legacy: The Joan Scarangello Foundation" to conquer lung cancer, the organization bearing her name has raised more than $6 million to fund research.

This year, the organization changed its name to Uniting Against Lung Cancer, bringing other groups into the fold. "We changed our name to enable every other family and organization to gather under our nonprofit umbrella, so we needed a more 'umbrella' name," explained Roxanne Donovan, a member of the Uniting Against Lung Cancer board. "We believe that we will only beat lung cancer by uniting with other families, and we needed to change our name--to make it less about one person and more about the goal--to allow that to happen."

Founder of Great Ink, Donovan tells GlobeSt.com that "this allows individual families to call themselves things like Elliot's Legacy: Uniting Against Lung Cancer; and the Caine Halter Fund: Uniting Against Lung Cancer. They can have their own events and direct the money toward research, and have all contributions written out to the 'Uniting' name."

However, the Joan's Legacy name lives on. "We are using 'Joan's Legacy: Uniting Against Lung Cancer' as our name for our New York event," Donovan says. "So 'Joan's Legacy: Uniting Against Lung Cancer' raised $900,000 for lung cancer research."

The night commemorated Lung Cancer Awareness Month in New York City with a strolling supper, a live performance by Grammy-winning singer Delbert McClinton and a silent auction. Among the items auctioned off were a food lover's travel package to Bologna, Italy and a year's rent-free living in the Moinian Group's Dwell95 at 95 Wall St.