Overview of the randomized phase III trials in non-small cell lung cancer in North America

Lung cancer is the leading cause of deaths due to cancer in the United States. Although surgery can be curative for the small group of patients with early stage disease, the majority of patients present with advanced disease, for which treatment is ineffective, resulting in a 5-year overall survival rate of only 13%. Research to discover and evaluate new treatment strategies that will result in a meaningful survival benefit for patients with lung cancer is constantly ongoing. However, the process is cumbersome and requires stringent evaluation of the candidate treatment during each phase of testing. The final step in this long process is to validate the benefit of a new treatment by comparing it with the current standard treatment in the setting of a randomized phase III clinical trial. The new promising treatments for non-small cell lung cancer that are currently in phase III testing in North America are reviewed, and upcoming phase III trials are discussed.