Small-cell lung cancer: an overview of issues in therapy.
As one of the few chemo- and radiosensitive neoplasms among the common epithelial solid tumors of adults, small-cell lung cancer has long tantalized clinical investigators. Although for the last 15-20 years therapy has yielded high remission rates, including substantial complete remission rates, results have not improved very much over nearly two decades of intensive therapeutic research, and long-term disease-free survival remains an elusive goal for the large majority of patients. At this point the number of promising untested hypotheses in therapy is quite small, and major advances will probably have to await either the serendipitous discovery of much more active drugs than we now possess, or else the purposeful development of new approaches based on insights into the nature of the transformed state and the biology of SCLC itself.
Medicine Branch, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892.
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D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D000971:Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols / Q000627:therapeutic use; D018288:Carcinoma, Small Cell / Q000628:therapy*; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D016371:Cranial Irradiation; D004354:Drug Screening Assays, Antitumor; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy*
D000970:Antineoplastic Agents