Finding biomarkers for non-small cell lung cancer diagnosis and prognosis

Abstract

Despite of several decades of efforts, lung cancer remains one of most deadly diseases, with a 5-year survival rate approximately 15% worldwide. In China, the situation is even worse. Although there is no official data released yet, the 5-year survival rate is estimated to be around 10%. In past 30 years, there was a dramatic increase of lung cancer related death about 465% in mainland China. Annually, about 400000 people die of lung cancer and the number is still climbing. At the same time, the number of new lung cancer cases also increase rapidly. The high mortality of lung cancer is mainly ascribed to two factors: the lack of effective ways to identify early diagnostic biomarkers and to treat metastatic cancer. Lung cancer can be pathologically divided into small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), among which NSCLC accounts for about 80% of all cases. In this review, we will focus on the recent efforts and progress in finding biomarkers in NSCLC. Since biomarkers are derived from both invasive and noninvasive ways, we divide them into these two categories and review them separately. We hope the discovery of biomarkers will eventually change the current clinical practice in NSCLC patients and improve their quality of life.