Development of targeted therapies in small cell lung cancer / 中国药理学通报

ABSTRACT

Small cell lung cancer(SCLC) is a type of neuroendcorine cancer with high growth fraction, early metastatic spread and poor prognosis, accounting for approximately 15％ of all newly diagnosed lung cancer cases.Patients with SCLC are generally treated with platinum-based chemotherapy in combination with radiotherapy.Despite good responses to chemotherapy in the early stage of treatment, patients develop drug resistance and recurrence soon.There has been limited success with the targeted approaches in clinical trials completed in the past several years.Novel targeted and more effective treatment strategies for SCLC are in urgent need With increasing translational research and a better understanding of the molecular basis of small cell lung cancer, a number of new targeted drugs such as kinase inhibitors, angiogenesis inhibitors, apoptosis inducers, proteasome inhibitors, epigenetic regulators, immune checkpoint inhibitors have been developed and investigated in various preclinical studies.Some of them have entered clinical trials.At the same time, a number of novel treatment strategies such as immunotherapy and combination treatment receive attention.This review summarizes potentially molecular targeted therapies that have been developed and employed recently, and ongoing and future clinical trials in attempt to improve patient outcomes in SCLC, and meanwhile to invite future potential SCLC new treatment strategies.