ErbBs in lung cancer

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, and advanced stage disease is largely refractory to conventional chemotherapy. Thus, there is an important need for alternative treatment strategies, and the ErbB proteins have emerged as potentially important therapeutic drug targets in this setting, apparently reflecting a state of “oncogene addiction” in some lung tumors. In this review, we discuss the recent identification of mutations that promote activation of ErbB family proteins in a subset of lung cancers, and the development of selective inhibitors of these proteins that have demonstrated clinical efficacy. We also discuss the problem of drug resistance, which severely limits the clinical utility of such agents, and has prompted intense efforts to better understand molecular mechanisms underlying drug resistance as well as strategies to overcome or prevent such resistance.