Meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week, Phyllis Greenberger, head of the Society for Women’s Health Research, said new research shows differences in susceptibility, progression and responsiveness to treatment in lung cancer between women and men.

The Lung Cancer Alliance said lung cancer research is severely underfunded. The disease kills more than 70,800 women a year, 30,000 more than breast cancer. The National Cancer Institute in 2006 spent approximately $13,519 for research on breast cancer per death compared to $1,638 on research per lung cancer death.

A study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology last February found that about 20 percent of lung cancer cases in women occur in nonsmokers, compared to 8 percent in men.

Research is under way to examine whether the biological traits of being a woman or a man impacts lung cancer susceptibility, the Society for Women’s Health Research said Friday in a release.