What is “individualized” treatment for lung cancer?

  Many cancers can be reclassified according to molecular criteria or genomic abnormalities, such as non-small cell lung cancer, where 80% of lung cancers diagnosed worldwide are non-small cell lung cancers and 20% are small cell lung cancers, and >50% of non-small cell lung cancers are diagnosed in advanced stages. The use of genomic analysis in diagnosis is increasingly useful to provide information that current and future treatment choices can be based on molecular or genomic alterations, and the selection of targeted therapeutics for different genetic targets is more conducive to significant patient outcomes.  In recent years, pharmacogenetics/pharmacogenomics has made breakthroughs in the study of chemotherapeutic drug mechanisms of action and other aspects, and the killing effect of chemotherapeutic drugs on tumor cells has been found to be significantly associated with the expression and/or polymorphism of a specific gene (group). The detection of relevant genes to predict the efficacy of chemotherapeutic drugs and to select appropriate drugs for individualized chemotherapy has become a reasonable choice to improve the efficacy and reduce ineffective treatment.  Individualized therapy is an approach to chemotherapy using specific and optimal therapeutic drug regimens based on the pharmacogenetic and pharmacogenomic characteristics of cancer patients. Individualized therapy can help patients choose the right drug, improve the targeting of treatment, and maximize their survival.  Currently, for most different patients suffering from the same disease, the treatment method is to use the same drugs and standard doses, but in fact, there are great differences in treatment effects and adverse reactions among different patients, and sometimes such differences are even fatal. With the progress of basic tumor research, there is also a brand new content of applied tumor clinical research. Targeted Medicine is the most advanced drug used to treat cancer, which stops the growth of cancer cells by acting on specific molecular targets necessary for cancer development and tumor growth.  Targeted medicine treatment is highly selective in killing tumor cells with no or little damage to normal cells and has relatively low toxic side effects, which effectively improves patients’ quality of life and treatment outcomes. With the successive introduction of highly effective and low-toxic targeted drugs, the treatment of malignant tumors has changed towards the treatment mode of chronic diseases, which has brought a new dawn to the eradication of tumors. However, precisely because targeted therapies are designed to attack specific target molecules, it is necessary to detect the presence of the corresponding target before the drug can be effective. For example, the EGFR gene in non-small cell lung cancer.