On the morning of May 20, 2016, the National Health Planning Commission issued a news release that several drugs with ‘tini’ in their names for the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer would see significant price reductions, and may be included in medical insurance in some areas. Many media outlets reported the news, and all of a sudden patients and their families were running for cover. Is this drug really so good? Can all lung cancer patients, take these drugs? What are these miracle drugs? The drugs mentioned in the news are a large class of drugs called ‘molecularly targeted drugs’. They are not newly invented drugs, and have been in existence for more than 10 years. In the treatment of middle and advanced lung cancer and other advanced malignant tumors, molecularly targeted drugs have achieved very good results. As the name suggests, molecularly targeted drugs take some structures on the tumor as “targets”. After the patient takes this kind of drug, the drug can shoot straight to the target, that is, the cancer cells, so that the cancer can be treated more efficiently. Traditional chemotherapy, like a machine gun, shoots at the body’s cells regardless of whether they are good or bad, so it causes common side effects such as hair loss, nausea and vomiting. Why can’t such a good drug be given to everyone? Because these molecularly-targeted drugs, which are the ‘arrows’ that are shot at these ‘targets’, are rather ostentatious, and they can only be shot at a specific certain ‘target’. Therefore, doctors need to carefully assess whether a particular patient’s tumor has this “target” before using these drugs. There are several ways to do this assessment, the most common being to take some cancer tissues or cells through surgery, puncture or blood sampling, and do laboratory tests to see if the patient has the genes that can be used for the drug, and if the patient can be treated with this drug. Studies show that only about 40% of Chinese patients carry this gene, which means they can use this type of medicine. The percentage is even lower in the European and American races. What’s more, this treatment is not perfect. Even with this “target,” some patients’ tumors don’t respond to the drug, which is called “drug resistance. Doctors are still researching possible reasons for this, and hope to help patients as much as possible by working with other treatment options to compensate for each other. What if the tumor doesn’t have that target? Currently, molecularly targeted drugs are still mainly for patients in advanced stages with specific gene mutations. For early to mid-stage lung cancer, surgery-based treatment is still emphasized. Even if surgical treatment is no longer possible, one should still follow the doctor’s advice and undergo standardized chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and many patients can achieve very good results. Cancer treatment, you should be cautious; you should not be too impatient, do a good job of testing, weighing the cost, and spend every penny on the knife edge, so as to maximize the efficiency of treating tumors.