Update on anti-angiogenic therapy in non-small cell lung cancer: Are we making progress?

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains a leading cause of death worldwide among patients diagnosed with malignancy. Despite new chemotherapy regimens and new cytotoxic combinations investigated in multiple clinical trials in recent years, no significant improvement in the prognosis of patients with lung cancer was achieved. The five-year survival rate for all patients diagnosed with NSCLC is about 15%, only 5% better than that of more than 40 years ago. New therapeutic approaches that target various different aspects of tumor progression and metastasis are of particular interest in to NSCLC patients. Drugs that block tumor vascularization (angiogenesis) or interfere with the activity of growth factor receptors and molecular pathways that are triggered by activation of these receptors are already used in clinical practice. In this review we will briefly discuss briefly the basic mechanisms of lung cancer angiogenesis, rationale for using drugs that block this process and present the most current recent data on their clinical efficacy.