Personalised medicine in lung cancer

Personalised therapy is currently a promising method of treatment for cancer patients. The dynamic development of molecular biology enabled identification of molecular subtypes of neoplasms, allowing determination of the optimal therapeutic management for the patient. Molecular diagnostics is also essential for cancer diagnosis, predicting disease development and prognosis. In the case of lung cancer, which is one of the most common malignant neoplasms, the main candidates for targeted treatment are patients with stage III and IV of the disease and with no possibility of radical local treatment. In clinical practice, the most proven therapeutic agents are inhibitors of tyrosine kinase, i.e. a receptor of the epithelial growth factor (TKI-EGFR), inhibitors of ALK, ROS1, BRAF and others, as well as immunotherapy applying monoclonal antibodies against immunological system checkpoints in cases of high level expression of programmed death receptor type 1 (PD-1) or its ligand (PD-L1), but also in cases of the high tumour mutational burden (TMB). As compared to chemotherapy, targeted therapy undoubtedly improves the treatment outcomes and, due to its lower toxicity, improves the quality of life of advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients. The aim of this paper is to characterise molecular tests which are currently applied in qualification of non-small cell lung cancer patients for targeted therapies.