Clinical efficacy of EGFR-TKIs in combination with chemotherapy in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer harboring EGFR mutations

Lung cancer, broadly divided into small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), is the leading cause of cancer-related death in both the United States and China (1,2). The majority of new cases are advanced NSCLC at the time of diagnosis, and epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs) are recommended to be the standard treatment option for advanced NSCLC patients harbouring activating EGFR mutation (3). Several randomized controlled trials that enrolled patients with EGFR-mutated NSCLC demonstrated that EGFR-TKI was superior to chemotherapy in terms of progression-free survival (PFS) and objective response rate (ORR) (4-7). However, concomitant administration of EGFR-TKIs standard chemotherapy is controversial.