Lung cancer, the largest single cause of cancer mortality in the U.S. and worldwide, kills more people every year than cancers of the breast, prostate and colon combined. The SEER registry estimated that 213,380 new cases and 160,390 deaths would occur in the US in 2007 [1]; age-standardized incidence rates across European countries in 2005 [2] varied between 21 and 77 per 100,000 in men and 3 and 35 in women, with age-standardized mortality rates ranging between 32 and 52 per 100,000 in men and between 8 and 19 per 100,000 in women. Traditional approaches to treatment, screening and prevention of lung cancer are inadequate, and there is currently no effective chemoprevention or proven effective screening for this disease. Newer molecular targeted chemotherapeutic agents result in short-term improvements in survival in responsive subsets, but have had marginal impact on overall mortality.
