New perspectives in the treatment of lung cancer

In recent years, huge research is going on in the fi eld of oncology and as a result, we can see a significantly longer survival in this area of
medicine. Lung cancer, which has been taken places in the back for decades, it has not become a curable disease, but begins to belong to the chronic diseases. As a result of brilliant surgical technics and stereotactic radiotherapy, or as a result of changes in drug treatment, 5-year survival is not uncommon in metastatic lung cancer patients, next to relatively long progression free survive. After the third-generation cytotoxic combinations the added growth inhibition (VEGF inhibitor) maintenance therapy or continuous pemetrexed cytotoxic chemotherapy were resulted in high survival benefi ts. The fi rst real breakthrough, long progression-free survival was achieved by targeted treatment, which proved to be effective with known driver mutations. The other great result, especially in squamous cell carcinoma, was the immunotherapy, the inhibition of immune checkpoints, which effi cacy was confirmed in adenocarcinoma also. Several studies are going on with adjuvant or neoadjuvant immunotherapy, and combined use of immunotherapy (either in combination with radiotherapy or cytotoxic chemotherapy).