Novel targeted therapies for advanced non-small lung cancer

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type of lung cancer accounting for almost 80%–85% of all lung cancer cases. Unfortunately, more than half of the patients will be diagnosed with advanced disease at the time of presentation, which makes their disease incurable. Historically, the 5 year overall survival for advanced NSCLC was 5%. However, there has been a significant increase in our understanding of the genetic basis of NSCLC, which has led to development of both immunotherapy and targeted therapy agents. This has improved the 5 year overall survival to become within the range of 15%–50% depending on certain mutations and biomarkers. Over the last decade the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved almost 20 new targeted therapies and clinical trials are still undergoing to evaluate more novel agents. In this review, we will present recent updates on novel targeted therapies.