Gefitinib for Advanced Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer

Patients with EGFR mutations and poor performance status benefited from first-line therapy.

Systemic platinum-based doublet chemotherapy improves survival in non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients who have good performance status (PS). However, those with poor PS are generally unable to tolerate cytotoxic therapy. Consequently, these patients usually are given best supportive care (BSC), and most die within 4 months. Japanese investigators recently showed that a small group of patients with mutations of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene achieved high overall response rates (ORR, 75%) and long median progression-free survival (PFS, 9.7 months) when administered gefitinib (Iressa), an EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) with less toxicity than cytotoxic agents (J Clin Oncol 2006; 24:3340).

To further evaluate the…

Reviewing Author

Lin-Chi Chen, MD, PhD