The treatment of<unk>  depends on several factors including stage, resectability, performance status, histology and genomic alterations acquired by the individual tumor. As in most cancer types, treatment approaches can be broadly divided into 5 categories: surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Surgery Early stage (I, II and IIIA) lung<unk> s are typically treated surgically to remove the tumor with pneumonectomy or lobectomy, if it is found to be resectable with imaging studies and biopsies and if the patient is considered able to tolerate surgery. Video-assisted thorascopic surgery (VATS) is often adopted, which consists in the insertion of a thorascope inside a small incision made in the chest; a lobe can be removed via the scope through this small incision. Incidence of<unk>  (in yellow) as compared to other lung cancer types, with fractions of non-smokers versus smokers shown for each type. Chemotherapy For advanced (stage IV) and unresectable lung tumors, the first-line therapy is platinum-based doublet chemotherapy, combining cisplatin or carboplatin with another cytotoxic agent. Regimens strongly depend on each patient performance status and response, and when the risk of adverse events could worsen quality of life significantly, basic supportive care is more recommended. Chemotherapy is also used as an adjuvant therapy following surgery to kill remaining cancer cells in patients with stage IIA, IIB and IIIA NSCLC. Radiotherapy<unk>  is a non-small cell lung carcinoma, and it is not as responsive to radiation therapy compared to small cell lung carcinoma. However, radiotherapy may be used as an adjuvant therapy for patients who have undergone a resection surgery to reduce the risk of lung cancer relapse. It may also benefit inoperable tumors that are localized to the chest and be part of palliative care to improve quality of life in patients not responding to surgery or chemotherapy. Targeted therapy Targeted therapy is available for lung<unk> s with certain molecular characteristics. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) have been developed to target mutant components of the receptor tyrosine kinase pathway such as EGFR, ALK and ROS1, which show frequent alterations in lung<unk> s. First-generation EGFR TKIs, including gefitinib and erlotinib, have been shown to be more effective in treating EGFR-mutated patients with respect to cytotoxic chemotherapy. Second-generation inhibitors such as afatinib and dacomitinib provided a broader scope of application as they are able to target not only the protein EGFR itself but also other members of the EGFR family, such as HER2 and HER4 (also known as ERBB2 and ERBB4), and they have shown improved progression-free survival compared to gefitinib. As the most common cause of acquired resistance to first-generation TKIs is a second EGFR mutation on codon 790, a third-generation EGFR TKI, osimertinib, has been developed to target this new mutation as well. MET amplification is another known mechanism of acquired resistance. ALK inhibitors such as crizotinib showed to be effective against tumors harboring ALK fusions. Most patients previously treated with crizotinib benefited from second-generation ALK inhibitors including ceritinib, alectinib and brigatinib. Resistance to ALK inhibitors can occur with novel acquired ALK mutations or amplifications. Also ROS1-positive tumors have shown high sensitivity to ALK inhibitors due to the high homology between the kinase domains of ROS1 and ALK. Immunotherapy Immune response can be prevented via activation of immune checkpoints, which consist in the binding of a ligand protein (e.g. PD-L1) to a receptor (e.g. PD-1) on the immune cell surface. As a consequence, cancer cells expressing PD-L1 can inactivate T cells thus fostering tumor growth. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have been developed to restore T cell-mediated antitumor immunity by blocking either the ligand or the receptor. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have been approved for NSCLC, including anti-PD-1 nivolumab and pembrolizumab. Anti-PD-1 agents are used for patients with advanced NSCLC whose tumors progress after first-line cytotoxic chemotherapy. Pembrolizumab was established as a new standard of care for patients with advanced or metastatic NSCLC with high PD-L1 expression levels, and responses are even more pronounced for tumor with a high mutational burden (i.e. having an elevated number of mutations). Therapeutic approaches combining multiple immune checkpoint inhibitors or one immune checkpoint inhibitors and a cytotoxic agent are undergoing clinical trials as of 2018. Howerver, the KEYNOTE-598 phase III trial has reported in 2021 that adding ipilimumab to pembrolizumab for NSCLC patients with PD-L1 tumor proportion score ≥50% does not confer any efficacy benefit, but may introduce greater toxicity. The potential role of anti-PD-1 agents as neoadjuvant therapy in resectable NSCLCs is also being investigated.
Adenocarcinoma of the lung
Giant-cell carcinoma of the lung
Sarcomatoid carcinoma of the lung
Acinic cell carcinoma of the lung
Squamous-cell carcinoma of the lung
Non-small-cell lung carcinoma
Pulmonary sclerosing pneumocytoma
Epithelial-myoepithelial carcinoma of the lung