Osteoblastic response as a healing reaction to chemotherapy mimicking progressive disease in patients with small cell lung cancer.

The osteoblastic response (OR) phenomenon as a healing reaction during effective chemotherapy-defined by the appearance of new osteoblastic bone lesions while disease response in other tumor sites was well documented-has previously been described for breast and prostate cancer. The purpose of this study was to investigate this phenomenon that could erroneously be interpreted as progressive disease in patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and to establish guidelines for interpretation of follow-up computed tomography (CT) examinations in this situation. Twenty-four patients with newly diagnosed SCLC and bone metastases were retrospectively included in this study.

New targeted treatments in lung cancer--overview of clinical trials.

Combination chemotherapy has been established as the cornerstone of systemic treatment for advanced lung cancer in the last ten to fifteen years. However, improvements with new drug combinations in recent years have been rather small and a general outcome plateau has been reached with one-year survival rates of about 40% and two-year survival rates of less than 15%. Survival over three to four years is still a rare event in this disease, and more and more efforts are being made to develop innovative systemic treatment strategies with mechanisms of action different from conventional cytotoxic drugs.