Lung cancer is the cancer with the highest incidence and mortality rate in China, bar none. I have personally experienced many lung cancer patients and their family members, who were either bewildered or frightened when they encountered lung cancer, or even sought medical help in an emergency. How to understand and treat lung cancer in a scientific and rational way? I share the latest views and progress in the field of lung cancer with you. Understanding lung cancer in order to overcome lung cancer. 1.Is lung cancer scary? Among many cancers, lung cancer ranks first in terms of incidence and mortality in China, and is truly the “No. 1 killer of cancer”. At present, there are 730,000 new cases of lung cancer in China every year, accounting for 1/3 of the world, and the rate of increase is very fast. Since the early symptoms of lung cancer are not obvious, it is difficult to detect it in time. Once the symptoms of coughing up sputum and blood appear, most of them are already in the advanced stage of the disease. In the 1990s, the survival period of patients with advanced lung cancer was only about 10 to 12 months. Modern medical research has found that most lung cancers occur based on abnormal gene production. Precision medicine can target the genetic abnormalities that lead to the occurrence of lung cancer and treat these abnormal genes through targeted drugs, and the survival period of patients is greatly extended. 2.Is there any treatment value for advanced lung cancer? Since targeted drugs were introduced into China in 2005, the survival period of lung cancer patients has been greatly extended. Data show that from 2005 to 2015, the median survival of patients with advanced lung cancer increased significantly by 2.4 times, from 14.1 months to 33.5 months; the five-year survival rate increased from 8 percent to 18 percent. This targeted therapy does not affect normal cell tissues, has little toxic side effects, and is orally administered, which is easy for patients to accept, and greatly improves the quality of life while controlling patients’ disease. 3.Why do we need genetic testing? In the era of precision medicine, individualized treatment is advocated. Before starting drug treatment, lung cancer patients should undergo genetic testing and use targeted drugs according to the genetic test results in order to have better curative effect. In the EGFR-sensitive mutation group, the median symptom improvement time for the targeted drug group was only 8 days, and the improvement rate of lung cancer-related symptoms in the targeted drug group was 75.6%, which was significantly higher than that of 53.9% in the chemotherapy group. Based on the great success of targeted drugs for EGFR-sensitive mutations in lung cancer treatment, new lung cancer driver genes (ALK, ROS1, C-Met, RET, etc.) have been discovered one after another, and related targeted drugs have sprung up and been used in clinical practice. 4.What should be done after targeted drug resistance? While the current targeted drugs for lung cancer open the door of precision medicine for patients, they also face another difficult problem: due to the unique evolutionary mechanism of cancer cells, some patients will develop drug resistance after taking the drugs for a period of time. Happily, the third-generation targeted lung cancer drugs have been marketed in the United States and are currently in phase III clinical trials in mainland China. It is believed that soon, third-generation targeted drugs will enable more patients to see the hope of extending their lives.