Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011 Jul;3(4):207-18.
doi: 10.1177/1758834011409000.

Customizing systemic therapy in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer

A M Sadowska  1 , V Nowé, A Janssens, E Boeykens, W A De Backer, P R Germonpré
Affiliations

Customizing systemic therapy in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer

A M Sadowska et al. Ther Adv Med Oncol. 2011 Jul.

Abstract

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Standard chemotherapy has been shown to improve quality of life and has a modest influence on overall survival. This modest improvement in survival is partly due to the choice of chemotherapy regimens that have been based on prognostic factors such as age, performance status and comorbidities of the patient. This underlines the importance of developing a more personalized therapy for patients with non-small cell lung cancer. Such an approach may reduce the variation in how individual patients respond to medications by tailoring therapies to their genetic profile. In this review we focus on several aspects of customized therapy, looking not only at patient characteristics but also to tumor histology and specific tumor biomarkers.

Keywords: bevacizumab; histology; non-small cell lung cancer; pemetrexed; personalized therapy; tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Development of personalized therapy for non-small cell lung cancer.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Many biomarkers have both prognostic and predictive properties. Randomized controlled trials and/or meta-analyses are required to determine their clinical usefulness.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Customized treatment of non-small cell lung cancer based on epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation and BRCA1 mRNA expression. WT, wild type.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Potential selection factors for customizing systemic treatment in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Moving from thinking of NSCLC as a single entity towards customized treatment of a collection of tumors grouped under the term NSCLC.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Amit I., Wides R., Yarden Y. (2007) Evolvable signaling networks of receptor tyrosine kinases: relevance of robustness to malignancy and to cancer therapy. Mol Syst Biol 3: 151–151 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Asmis T.R., Ding K., Seymour L., Shepherd F.A., Leighl N.B., Winton T.L., et al. (2008) Age and comorbidity as independent prognostic factors in the treatment of non small-cell lung cancer: a review of National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group trials. J Clin Oncol 26(1): 54–59 - PubMed
    1. Cappuzzo F., Ciuleanu T., Stelmakh L., Cicenas S., Szczesna A., Juhasz E., et al. (2010) Erlotinib as maintenance treatment in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer: a multicentre, randomised, placebo-controlled phase 3 study. Lancet Oncol 11: 521–529 - PubMed
    1. Ceppi P., Volante M., Saviozzi S., Rapa I., Novello S., Cambieri A., et al. (2006) Squamous cell carcinoma of the lung compared with other histotypes shows higher messenger RNA and protein levels for thymidylate synthase. Cancer 107: 1589–1596 - PubMed
    1. Ciuleanu T., Brodowicz T., Zielinski C., Kim J.H., Krzakowski M., Laack E., et al. (2009) Maintenance pemetrexed plus best supportive care versus placebo plus best supportive care for non-small-cell lung cancer: a randomised, double-blind, phase 3 study. Lancet 374: 1432–1440 - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources