Lung Cancer Researcher Diagnosed with Stage 4 Disease Despite Never Smoking: ‘I Never Thought I Would Have This’

• Dr. Bryant Lin, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer despite never smoking
• “I never would’ve thought that I would have this cancer,” the researcher told Yahoo! Life of the diagnosis
• Lin has dedicated a lot of his career to researching the disease

Stanford University School of Medicine clinical professor and researcher Dr. Bryant Lin has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer despite never smoking in his life.

The oncologist, per the Stanford Medicine blog Scope, was diagnosed with non-small cell cancer — also known as never-smoker lung cancer — in early May, around a month before his 50th birthday.

Lin, who is the co-founder of Stanford’s Center for Asian Health Research and Education (CARE), has dedicated a lot of his career to researching lung cancer specifically among Asian American non-smokers, The Stanford Daily reported.

“I never would’ve thought that I would have this cancer, or become the poster child for my center working on this cancer,” Lin told Yahoo! Life.

Speaking with the outlet, Lin detailed his road to diagnosis. He first experienced lingering cough and a tight throat for around five or six weeks over spring.

Asking for advice from an ear, nose and throat (ENT) physician colleague, Lin was encouraged to have a chest X-ray. The X-ray “showed opacity in the lungs, indicating infection or cancer,” according to Yahoo! Life. Lin then had a CT scan and a bronchoscopy to examine his lung tissue.

Less than two weeks later, Lin received a diagnosis and began treatment.

Dr. Heather Wakelee, Stanford’s chief of oncology — who studies lung cancer in people who have never smoked — has been among those treating Lin. “I can just call people up and say, ‘Let’s get this done,’ ” he told Yahoo! Life.

According to Scope, 15 to 20 percent of people diagnosed with lung cancer are non-smokers. The diagnosis “is the result of a gene mutation that disproportionately affects those of Asian descent, particularly women.”

“About 50% of nonsmoker Asians [with lung cancer] have this mutation, and less than 20% of non-Hispanic whites have it,” Lin told Yahoo! Life. “We don’t really know why Asians get this mutation more than other groups.”

According to the American Cancer Society, “Lung cancers in people who don’t smoke are often different from those that occur in people who do. They tend to develop in younger people and often have certain gene changes that are different from those in tumors found in people who smoke. In some cases, these gene changes can be used to guide treatment.”

Lin told Yahoo! Life he’s taking “a relatively new daily pill, called Osimertinib, which attacks the mutated cancer cells,” and targets the cancer with fewer side effects because it’s so “precise.”

“I feel great, and I’m lucky that I’m doing so well clinically and in terms of quality of life,” he said to the outlet.

The researches still has to undergo more chemotherapy every few weeks. “The downside is that eventually, the cancer can develop resistance to this targeted treatment,” Lin added to the publication. 

He went on to say that he’s been given advice from a former colleague also diagnosed with cancer, “He said, ‘You just have to live long enough for the next treatment to work,’ ” Lin recalled to Yahoo! Life.

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Lin has been teaching a class named “MED 275: From Diagnosis to Dialogue: A Doctor’s Real-Time Battle with Cancer.”

In the class, he told students about a letter he’d received from an elderly patient with chronic kidney disease, in which the patient thanked Lin of “taking such good care” of him. “That letter arrived two weeks after the man’s death … which means that he spent time in his final hours writing a letter for me,” Lin said, per Scope.

“I’m not sure how long I have. One year? Two years? Five years?” the professor told students. “In a way, this class is part of my letter — what I’m doing to give back to my community as I go through this.”

Lin didn’t immediately respond when contacted by PEOPLE.