Second-line therapy of squamous non-small cell lung cancer: an evolving landscape.

The treatment of lung cancer has radically changed over the last few years. The discovery of druggable oncogenic alterations and the introduction of immunotherapy have provided lung cancer patients with the possibility of more efficient and less toxic therapeutic alternatives than chemotherapy. In the case of lung squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC), the treatment progress is slower than adenocarcinoma, for which several targeted agents have been already approved.

Anaplastic lymphoma kinase inhibitors in phase I and phase II clinical trials for non-small cell lung cancer.

Crizotinib is a first-in-class ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), which has proven its superiority over standard platinum-based chemotherapy for the first-line therapy of ALK-rearranged non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. The development of acquired resistance to crizotinib represents an ongoing challenge with the central nervous system being one of the most common sites of relapse. Ceritinib and alectinib are approved second-generation ALK TKIs.