Chemoprevention in lung carcinogenesis--an overview.

Lung cancer ranks among the most commonly occurring malignancies and is currently the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. This is due to its late diagnosis and relative resistance to standard oncological treatment approaches. The heavy burden of lung cancer and its treatment resistance have elicited an intense interest in the promising approach of chemoprevention. Chemoprevention is defined as a pharmacologic intervention to suppress or reverse the carcinogenic process and the lung is one of the most studied sites for cancer chemoprevention. This review, with a short update on pulmonary carcinogenesis, will summarize the available knowledge of chemoprevention trials and agents with a preventive potential in the 'lung field'.