Assessing the Prognosis of Patients with Metastatic or Recurrent Non-small Cell Lung Cancer in the Era of Immunotherapy and Targeted Therapy

Locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is characterized by poor prognosis and is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The main problem in NSCLC is treatment resistance and a high potential for progression and metastasis, which results in low survival rates for patients. Immunotherapy (IO) alone or combined with chemotherapy and targeted therapies, while dedicated to selective subgroups of patients, replaced traditional cytotoxic therapies (radiotherapy or chemotherapy) in advanced stages of disease. Therefore, it’s important to search for new features that may help predict the effectiveness of currently available therapies. The paper presents preliminary results of exploratory data and survival analyses (Kaplan-Meier survival curves, uni- and multivariate Cox proportional hazards models), indicating potential factors that may help stratify the group of patients to select the appropriate treatment.