A new brainwave in non-small cell lung cancer: driving targeted therapy to central nervous system metastases

Significant advances have been achieved in metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) systemic therapy in the past decade (1,2). A landmark in this field was the discovery of sensitizing mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene, and the realization that they could in fact predict responses to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) - erlotinib and gefitinib (1,2). However, the best approach to brain metastases (BM) is still a matter of debate, and was recently addressed in the provocative paper by Welsh et al. (3).