Combination of apatinib and docetaxel in treating advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer patients with wild-type EGFR: a multi-center, phase II trial

Lung cancer is the most prevalent and fatal cancer in Chinses population with the non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), accounting for 80–85% of all lung cancer cases and being the most significant subtype (1). NSCLC is further divided into squamous cell carcinoma, large cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma and others, among which non-squamous NSCLC accounts for half of all NSCLC cases. In clinical settings, most NSCLC patients are diagnosed as locally advanced or systematically metastasized diseases; thus, curative surgery is unprocurable. Instead, the targeted therapy for patients with targetable genetic aberrations [such as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)] improves the survival of advanced NSCLC patients. However, for patients lacking targetable genetic aberrations, chemotherapy remains the only option (2,3). Although chemotherapy, as first-line option, has brought certain benefits and there exists the choice of second-line therapy, the clinical outcomes for advanced NSCLC patients are barely satisfactory, especially when the patients fail the first-line therapy