Division of Thoracic Surgery, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 6 White, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Cancer Treat Rev. 2012 Oct;38(6):650-61. doi: 10.1016/j.ctrv.2011.11.008. Epub 2012 Jan 9.
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the biggest cancer killer in the United States and worldwide. In 2011, there are estimated to be 221,130 new cases of lung cancer in the United States. Over a million people will die of lung cancer worldwide this year alone. When possible, surgery to remove the tumor is the best treatment strategy for patients with NSCLC. However, even with adjuvant (postoperative) chemotherapy and radiation, more than 40% of patients will develop recurrences locally or systemically and ultimately succumb to their disease. Thus, there is an urgent need for developing superior approaches to treat patients who undergo surgery for NSCLC to eliminate residual disease that is likely responsible for these recurrences. Our group and others have been interested in using immunotherapy to augment the efficacy of current treatment strategies. Immunotherapy is very effective against minimal disease burden and small deposits of tumor cells that are accessible by the circulating immune cells. Therefore, this strategy may be ideally suited as an adjunct to surgery to seek and destroy microscopic tumor deposits that remain after surgery. This review describes the mechanistic underpinnings of immunotherapy and how it is currently being used to target residual disease and prevent postoperative recurrences after pulmonary resection in NSCLC.
非小细胞肺癌（NSCLC）是美国和全球最大的癌症杀手。据估计，2011 年美国将有 221130 例新的肺癌病例。仅今年一年，全世界就有超过 100 万人死于肺癌。在可能的情况下，手术切除肿瘤是 NSCLC 患者的最佳治疗策略。然而，即使接受辅助（术后）化疗和放疗，仍有超过 40%的患者会局部或全身复发，最终死于疾病。因此，迫切需要开发更好的方法来治疗接受 NSCLC 手术的患者，以消除可能导致这些复发的残留疾病。我们的研究小组和其他研究小组一直对使用免疫疗法来增强当前治疗策略的疗效感兴趣。免疫疗法对微小的疾病负担和循环免疫细胞可触及的少量肿瘤细胞非常有效。因此，这种策略可能非常适合作为手术的辅助手段，以寻找和摧毁手术后残留的微小肿瘤沉积物。这篇综述描述了免疫疗法的机制基础，以及它目前如何被用于靶向 NSCLC 肺切除术后的残留疾病和预防术后复发。
