Clinical utility of epidermal growth factor receptor expression for selecting patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer for treatment with erlotinib.

Introduction: Erlotinib (Tarceva) has demonstrated a survival benefit in unselected patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after failure of chemotherapy. Because not all patients benefit from erlotinib, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) protein expression may provide a basis for selecting patients for treatment with this EGFR inhibitor.

Methods: Tumor samples from patients who participated in National Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group Study BR.

Smoking history and epidermal growth factor receptor expression as predictors of survival benefit from erlotinib for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer in the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group study BR.21.

Background: Erlotinib is an oral, reversible inhibitor of the HER1/epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase. A survival advantage for erlotinib compared with placebo was demonstrated in the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group study BR.21, a randomized double-blind study of 731 patients with advanced-stage non-small-cell lung cancer.