[Molecular biology in diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer]

Progress in translational research for lung cancer achieved during the last 10 years was reviewed. Since the discovery of oncogenes in 1980s, evidences of molecular basis of human cancer were rapidly accumulated and since the determination of draft sequences of human genome, the progress was further accelerated. With these molecular knowledge, it is now possible to comprehensively and extensively analyze human cancer using deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) chips. The most remarkable event in this field was discovery of mutations of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene in a subset of patients with pulmonary adenocarcinoma with a high response to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor. In the next 10 years, individualization of cancer treatment especially by targeted drugs based on molecular characteristics of each tumor using patients' tissue will be increasingly more important.