JLE

Bulletin du Cancer

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Towards customized therapy for non small cell lung cancer Volume 95, issue 10, octobre 2008

Authors
Département de médecine-oncologie thoracique, Institut Gustave-Roussy, Villejuif, France

Despite the development of new chemotherapy regimens, including platinum-containing combinations, the prognosis of NSCLC remains very poor. Advances in the understanding of cancer biology and more specifically, of cell signalling pathways have led to the identification of several potential molecular targets and to the development of new agents directed against these targets. The most advanced molecular therapies target the EGF (epidermal growth factor) receptor and the angiogenesis pathway. Despite this progress, treatment efficacy (molecularly-targeted therapy or chemotherapy) appears to be very heterogeneous across patients. The current challenge is to be able to define the most relevant patient-tailored treatment, based on clinical, histological or biological markers, in order to improve the benefit and tolerance of antitumor treatments. Discovering new prognostic or predictive biomarkers for lung cancer is one of the main objectives of translational cancer research.