In a recent post, I described the approval of taxotere as a second-line chemotherapy with a modest but survival benefit for patients previously treated with one line of chemo, usually a platinum-based doublet.

Although we are all frustrated by the relatively slow pace of progress in lung cancer, there are times when we can look back and feel that we have made a real impact. Six years ago there were no treatments that were FDA approved and appeared to benefit patients who had previously been treated with first-line chemo for NSCLC. Now there are several.

As we established several years ago that it is indeed possible to do clinical trials with more than 50 or even 100 patients with advanced BAC, we were also seeing that those first forays into advanced BAC with standard chemotherapy were somewhat disappoingting (described further in another post).

Thus far, the vast majority of patients who have an initial response to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors like Iressa and Tarceva will eventually become resistant to them.