Genomics of lung cancer may change diagnosis, prognosis and therapy

Despite significant improvements in tumor management in general, the prognosis of lung cancer patients remains dismal. It is a hope that our increasing knowledge in molecular aspects of tumor development, growth and progression will open new targets for therapeutic interventions. In this review we discuss some of the more recent results of this field. This includes the susceptibility factors, an association between genetic changes in EGFR pathway and tyrosine kinase inhibitors, the role of gene hypermethylation and genetic profiling, as well as different molecular aspects of tumor progression. Available data all support that lung cancer is a group of diseases with not only distinct histological but with similarly different genetic characters. Accordingly, the diagnosis, prognosis and therapy must accommodate this heterogeneity.