Neoadjuvant EGFR TKIs: toward personalized management in non-small-cell lung cancer

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-specific death in men and women. Unfortunately, the majority of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have locally advanced or metastatic disease at diagnosis with a 5-year survival rate of only 4% (1). However, a minority of patients with NSCLC present at diagnosis with resectable disease. Treatment for early-stage disease in fit patients is focused on curative surgery, but 30% to 70% of patients with completely resected disease experience relapse (2,3), often by distant metastases, suggesting that early-stage NSCLC is frequently a micrometastatic disease at diagnosis (4,5) and adjuvant and/or neoadjuvany cisplatin-based chemotherapy are advised for patients with early-stage (6-8).