Predicting response to chemotherapy with early-stage lung cancer

A recent meta-analysis of 11,107 patients with non-small cell lung cancer who had undergone surgical resection showed that the 5-year survival benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy was 4%, and that of adjuvant chemoradiotherapy was 5%. Two trials have shown a trend toward improved survival with adjuvant paclitaxel plus carboplatin. However, the benefit of adjuvant treatment remains suboptimal. We must distinguish between patients who will not relapse-and who can thus be spared adjuvant treatment-and those who will-for whom adjuvant treatment must be personalized. Several gene expression signatures, generally containing nonoverlapping genes, provide similar predictive information on clinical outcome, and a model combining several signatures did not perform better than did each of the signatures separately. The invasiveness gene signature, containing 186 genes, includes genes involved in the nuclear factor κB pathway, the RAS-mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway, and epigenetic control of gene expression. A 15-gene signature has identified JBR.10 patients who are more sensitive to adjuvant chemotherapy.