Tailor-made chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer patients.

Cheng-Long Huang, Hiroyasu Yokomise, Masakazu Fukushima, Moritoshi Kinoshita

Second Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Kagawa University, 1750-1, Miki-cho, Kita-gun, Kagawa 761-0793, Japan. chuang@kms.ac.jp

Future oncology (London, England) 2006 Apr

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The selection of the most effective chemotherapy treatment based on evaluation of biomarkers, that is, 'tailor-made chemotherapy', can improve the clinical outcome of non-small cell lung cancer patients, including early-stage tumors with a high metastatic potential and advanced-stage tumors with a low proliferation rate. Therefore, treatment would be chosen according to which drugs would be most effective in combating specific tumors. For example: 5-fluorouracil-derived agents would be used for tumors with a low expression of thymidylate synthase; gefitinib and erlotinib for tumors with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations or increased EGFR gene copy numbers; cisplatin and carboplatin for tumors with a low expression of excision repair cross complementing-1; and gemcitabine for tumors with a low expression of ribonucleotide reductase. The remaining populations of non-small cell lung cancers require chemotherapy using other drugs based on an evaluation of other targeted molecules.

Citation

Cheng-Long Huang, Hiroyasu Yokomise, Masakazu Fukushima, Moritoshi Kinoshita. Tailor-made chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer patients. Future oncology (London, England). 2006 Apr;2(2):289-99