Current and Developing Treatments to Target EGFR for NSCLC

Abstract

Lung cancer is amongst the most diagnosed cancers with a relatively low five-year survival rate of around 20 percent. Currently, the most frequent first-line treatments for lung cancer, more specifically non-small cell lung cancer, consist of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, target therapy, and immunotherapy. However, challenges such as the high cost of treatment, drug resistance, and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment make it difficult to treat the cancer effectively. While researching ways to overcome these challenges, new treatments involving CAR-T therapy which has shown promise in treating blood cancer, and CRISPR which has shown the precise targeting of genes are being developed intensively. This review will delve into the EGFR gene, and how targeting it could improve the prognosis due to its prevalence in patients diagnosed with NSCLC. Overall, this review will detail the advantages and disadvantages of each of the current treatments for NSCLC and present new treatments like CAR-T and CRISPR for NSCLC.