Expanding therapies for crizotinib refractory ALK-rearranged nonsmall cell lung cancer

Since the discovery of the EML4-ALK fusion oncogene in 2007, there have been three drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of ALK rearranged lung cancer. The reported frequency of ALK-rearrangement is between 4–7% in unselected advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (1-3), with an associated clinical phenotype of adenocarcinoma in never or light smokers, and younger patients (2,3).