Advances in molecular and immunologic targeted therapies for squamous cell carcinoma of the lung

Despite advances in risk reduction (primarily smoking cessation), surgical, chemotherapeutic and radiation treatments, lung cancer remains the largest cause of cancer mortality in the US by far (1). Lung cancer is typically divided by histology into small call (15% of diagnoses) and non-small cell (85% of diagnoses) types, the latter comprising of adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma (SqCC) and large cell carcinoma (2). From the 1950s until the 1980s, SqCC was the most common non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and lung cancer overall (3). In the 1980s, the relative incidence of adenocarcinoma overtook the incidence of SqCC and now remains the most common subtype of lung cancer (4,5). However, the absolute incidence of SqCC has been rising in women in recent years, and remains a common malignancy in both men and women (5)