Selection of chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer is facilitated by new therapeutic strategies

Abstract

Nowadays, advanced non-small cell lung cancer is still an incurable disease. Recent researches have led to considerable progress in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. This article reviews the main studies on chemotherapy on non-small cell lung cancer and discusses the new therapeutic strategies available to date. Stable disease (SD) is necessary in chemotherapy for tumor. The proportion of population with responders or SD basically maintained similar regardless of regimens. The overall survival after chemotherapy for patients with SD was lower than patients with responders, and higher than patients with progressive disease. Greater benefits could be achieved in patients with effective induction chemotherapy using chemotherapeutic agents for maintenance therapy, whereas the benefits were relatively small for patients with SD. It has been found that epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation status had certain correlation with the efficacy of chemotherapy. First-line chemotherapy has shown advantages in effective rate and progression free survival on EGFR mutant. EGFR mutation produced significant effects on the efficacy of postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy. Patients with EGFR mutation had a higher effective rate than wild-type EGFR patients, and patients with responders had a greater benefit in progression free survival from maintenance therapy. However, it is still necessary to carry out more careful and deeper studies and analyses on traditional cytotoxic chemotherapy, to further optimize cytotoxic chemotherapy and to use molecular targeted agents with different mechanisms.

Keywords: Advanced disease; epidermal growth factor receptor; overall survival; stable disease.