Raising the bar: the future of EGFR inhibition in non-small lung cancer

The identification of oncogenic activating mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and subsequent development of targeted therapies for this subset of nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) represents a paradigm shift in solid tumor oncology. If the development and clinical validation of imatinib in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cracked open the door of the precision medicine era, then the first-generation EGFR inhibitors swung it wide open.