[Chemotherapy for advanced non-small cell lung cancer]

It is well-known that cisplatin-based chemotherapy can prolong the survival of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This report reviews the recently published clinical trials of chemotherapy for advanced NSCLC. New agents developed in the 1990s such as paclitaxel, docetaxel, gemcitabine, vinorelbine and irinotecan prolonged the survival of patients with advanced NSCLC by single-agent chemotherapy, and combinations of platinum and one of the new agents were superior to existing platinum-based combinations. Accordingly, the current standard chemotherapy for previously untreated patients with advanced NSCLC is considered to be a two-drug combination consisting of cisplatin and one of the new agents. For elderly patients, single-agent chemotherapy using vinorelbine or gemcitabine is recommended. However, the usefulness of platinum-containing chemotherapy for elderly patients has not yet been throughly evaluated. As salvage chemotherapy for patients previously treated with chemotherapy, the effectiveness of docetaxel is confirmed by two randomized trials. However, since many promising agents including pemetrexed and molecular targeting agents such as gefitinib, erlotinib and bevacizumab have been currently developed, we have to evaluate the usefulness of these agents by well-designed clinical trials.