At present, target therapy is part of the routine management for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

This article is based on the systematic review performed for the 2014 update of the European Lung Cancer Working Party guidelines, and focuses on the most recently published randomised clinical trials (RCTs), systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

The target therapies analysed in the lierature review were: tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) of active epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations (e.g. erlotinib, gefinitib and afatinib), anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) rearrangements (e.g. crizotinib) or angiogenesis (drugs under development), or monoclonal antibodies against vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) (e.g. bevacizumab) or EGFR (e.g. cetuximab).

In 2014, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved five of these drugs for the treatment of advanced NSCLC: erlotinib, gefinitib, afatinib, crizotinib and bevacizumab.

Read the full journal artice published in European Respiratory Review, 2015; 24: 23–29.