Improving lung cancer survival; time to move on

With this article we would like to point out that survival of lung cancer could be strongly improved by controlling two pivotal prognostic factors: stage and treatment. This is corresponding with recent reports that show a decrease in lung cancer mortality by screening programs. In addition, modulation of the patient’s immune system by immunotherapy either as monotherapy or combined with conventional cancer treatments offers the prospect of tailoring treatments much more precisely and has also been shown to lead to a better response to treatment and overall survival of non-small cell lung cancer patients.Since only small improvements in survival can be expected in advanced disease with the use of conventional therapies, more research should be focused on lung cancer screening programs and patient tailored immunotherapy with or without conventional therapies. If these approaches are clinically combined in a standard multidisciplinary policy we might be able to advance the survival of patients with lung cancer.Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Approximately 85% of all cases of lung cancer are non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The 5-year survival of this aggressive disease is only 16% [1]. One of the reasons for this extremely poor survival is that most lung cancer cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage due to the relative lack of clinical symptoms during early stages. Metastatic NSCLC is currently an incurable disease for which standard chemotherapy provides only minor improvement in overall survival. In addition, less than 30% of patients with advanced-stage NSCLC have a response to platinum-based chemotherapy, the most commonly used first line treatment at this stage of the disease [2].During the last decades, advances in diagnostic and therapeutic approaches of this devastating disease have been made, however, long-term survival rates have hardly changed in the past 50 years [3]. Therefore, new approaches are required.Survival