Advanced Lung Cancer—Reaching a Survival Ceiling with Chemotherapy, the Nibs, and the Mabs

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Despite intensive research conducted during the past years, little improvement in overall survival has been achieved for patients with advanced disease. Chemotherapy and radiation continue to be the mainstays of treatment for unresectable patients, and targeted agents seem to have added little improvement to overall survival while dramatically increasing costs and producing significant clinical side effects. In contrast to the immunosuppression which occurs as a result of the use of chemotherapy and pathway blockers, novel therapies are emerging which either stimulate tumor specific immune responses due to apoptotic focal tumor destruction or attack tumor-induced regulatory T-cell immunosuppression. Such new approaches should be fully explored, as they have potential to offer very different outcomes for advanced lung cancer patients.