Advancements in next-generation sequencing for diagnosis and treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer

In recent years, lung cancer has been the most commonly diagnosed cancer globally; 1.6 million people died of lung cancer in 2012 globally, making lung cancer the leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Lung cancer can be mainly histologically classified into two types: non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), accounting for approximately 85% and 15% of cases, respectively. NSCLC can be further classified as squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, and largecell lung carcinoma, among which lung adenocarcinoma is the most common primary malignant tumor. Unfortunately, most NSCLC cases are diagnosed at a late stage when the survival rate is low; the 5-year survival rate is approximately 16%. Researchers have shown that lung cancer is a heterogeneous disease and that genome alteration plays a significant role in disease occurrence. In recent years, there have been large technological advances in genomic testing. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is