Preclinical strategies targeted at non-small-cell lung cancer signalling pathways with striking translational fallout

Abstract

Over the past decades, a plethora of cytotoxic agents, administered alone or in combinations, have been prescribed for the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) but improvements regarding patient outcome remain disappointing. Therefore, additional therapeutic strategies are urgently required to increase response rate and survival. By the time researchers had begun to understand the processes involved in NSCLC development, the genetic aetiology of lung cancer had been progressively defined. The constitutive activation of receptor tyrosine kinases and their downstream signalling pathways has opened encouraging avenues of investigation for NSCLC treatment. Several new targeted compounds have evolved from preclinical to clinical settings to affect growth factor pathways of NSCLC, and their therapeutic implications will be reviewed and discussed here.