Medical treatment of advanced thoracic neuroendocrine tumors

Thoracic Neuroendocrine Tumors (TNETs) range from the more indolent behavior of the well-differentiated to the highly aggressive poorly differentiated forms. A clinical approach totally different in terms of diagnosis and treatment is therefore required. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are the treatments of choice in poorly differentiated, whereas biological and target therapy, peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PPRT) and temozolomide have shown efficacy in small series or in the subgroup analysis of larger trials in well differentiated. However, no specific trials have been performed before this year. The first large, prospective, randomized trial (LUNA trial) entirely dedicated to TNET is ongoing at the time of this publication.