Patients with late-stage NSCLC are often symptomatic, with specific pulmonary problems (eg, cough, breathlessness, hemoptysis) and general symptoms (eg. fatigue, weight loss) that can cause extreme distress to the patient. Therefore, improvements in disease-related symptoms and quality of life (QoL) are the key desired outcomes of medical management.7 Effective, palliative, low-toxicity with reasonable treatment cost for patients with advanced NSCLC are needed. Recently, more and more countries consider evidence of economic value along with clinical efficacy.
The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is a promising target for anticancer therapy because it is expressed or highly expressed in a variety of tumors, including NSCLC. 8,9 Furthermore, high levels of EGFR expression have been associated with a poor prognosis in lung cancer patients in several studies. 10-12 EGFR-targeted cancer therapies are currently being developed; strategies include inhibition of the intracellular tyrosine kinase domain of the receptor by small molecules such as gefitinib (Iressa \[ZD1839\]; AstraZeneca, Wilmington, DE).13 Iressa is an orally active, selective EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor that blocks signal transduction pathways implicated in the proliferation and survival of cancer cells.
