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Trials recruiting now, the landmark trials, the key papers and what they mean, the latest literature, and the milestones year by year.
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The 48 most recent of 65 papers; see them all →
For someone offered the test, these are the numbers that describe what a result means in an NHS population: about 1 in 100 tests came back positive each year, between 46 and 58 in 100 positives were cancer, and a negative result left about 1 in 100 with an undetected cancer within the year. The test found between a quarter and a third of all cancers diagnosed in a screening round, and about half to two thirds of the 12 cancer types it was designed to find. Whether finding them this way reduces late-stage diagnoses is the primary question, and this paper says only that the answer was no; the primary-endpoint paper had not appeared on Europe PMC by 23 September 2026.
One of the most cited trial reports Europe PMC returns for Tarlatamab in Small-cell lung cancer, so it is a natural first reading for anyone weighing the idea it is linked from. The record was linked automatically by title and abstract; read the abstract above and the paper itself before relying on any figure.
Adjuvant treatment for lung cancer is now chosen by genotype. A resected ALK-positive tumour is treated with two years of a tablet instead of four cycles of platinum, which is a different life as well as a different outcome.
The first regimen to beat osimertinib as first-line treatment for EGFR-mutant lung cancer. It sets up the choice that now faces every newly diagnosed patient: a more effective but harder combination now, or a simpler tablet with something held back for later.
The biggest single advance in small-cell lung cancer since twice-daily radiotherapy in 1999, and the strongest argument that the disease responds to immunotherapy when it is given at a lower tumour burden.
Stage III lung cancer is now treated by genotype as well as by stage: an EGFR mutation moves a patient from durvalumab consolidation to osimertinib consolidation. It is also the strongest hazard ratio in the lung cancer literature, which is a reason to read the overall survival data carefully when they arrive.
It reframes air quality as cancer policy rather than respiratory policy, and it explains the shape of lung cancer in never-smokers: the mutations are common and mostly silent, and what differs is whether something inflames the tissue enough to let one of them grow.
Adding chemotherapy to osimertinib delays progression. Whether it extends life, and whether the same benefit could be had by giving the chemotherapy later to the patients who need it, is what the overall survival analysis and the registry watch on this roadmap are for.
Query for this cancer: (TITLE:"Lung cancer" OR ABSTRACT:"Lung cancer" OR TITLE:"all types" OR ABSTRACT:"all types" OR TITLE:"Bronchogenic carcinoma" OR ABSTRACT:"Bronchogenic carcinoma" OR TITLE:"Lung carcinoma" OR ABSTRACT:"Lung carcinoma" OR TITLE:"Cancer of the lung" OR ABSTRACT:"Cancer of the lung" OR TITLE:"Trachea, bronchus and lung cancer" OR ABSTRACT:"Trachea, bronchus and lung cancer") AND (treatment OR therapy OR trial OR survival OR diagnosis). Results are unfiltered search hits about Lung cancer (all types), not a curated reading list.
Doll and Hill's case-control study of London hospital patients, published in the British Medical Journal in the same year as Wynder and Graham's American series, found the association that tobacco control has rested on since; the British Doctors Study that followed it ran for fifty years.
The 1950 case-control studies were called artefacts, so a cohort was assembled before anybody was ill and followed to death. Wynder and Graham's 684 proven cases had appeared in JAMA four months before Doll and Hill's BMJ paper.
9,387 patients from 52 randomised trials: a 27 percent reduction in the risk of death when chemotherapy was added to supportive care, and 5 percent absolute benefit at five years after surgery.
CARET gave beta carotene and retinol to 18,314 smokers and asbestos workers and was stopped 21 months early: relative risk of lung cancer 1.28 and of lung cancer death 1.46.
Twice-daily thoracic radiotherapy raised five-year survival from 16 to 26 percent in limited-stage disease, and the prophylactic cranial irradiation overview of 987 patients showed treating a brain with no visible disease raises three-year survival from 15.3 to 20.7 percent.
1,207 patients, a 19 percent response rate and a median survival of 7.9 months whichever platinum doublet was used. The ceiling of undirected cytotoxic treatment, measured.
ECOG 4599 added bevacizumab to chemotherapy in 878 patients with non-squamous disease: 12.3 against 10.3 months, with a risk of increased treatment-related deaths.
A small inversion on chromosome 2p, found in 5 of 75 tumours, transformed fibroblasts. Crizotinib, built as a MET inhibitor, gave a 57 percent response rate in 2010 after 1,500 patients were screened to find 82.
Pemetrexed beat gemcitabine in adenocarcinoma (12.6 against 10.9 months) and lost in squamous disease (9.4 against 10.8); LACE pooled 4,584 resected patients for a 5.4 percent five-year gain concentrated in stage II and III.
1,217 East Asian never-smokers and light former smokers randomised between gefitinib and chemotherapy; the benefit lived entirely in the EGFR-mutant subgroup, and EGFR testing became standard.
53,454 Americans aged 55 to 74 with 30 or more pack-years were randomised to three annual low-dose CT scans or chest radiographs: 20.0 percent fewer lung cancer deaths and 6.7 percent fewer deaths from any cause. It also measured the cost: 24.2 percent of CT screens were positive and 96.4 percent of those positives were false.
PLCO randomised 154,901 people to four annual chest X-rays or usual care: 1,213 lung cancer deaths against 1,230 after 13 years. It is why low-dose computed tomography had to be proved separately.
PACIFIC put durvalumab after chemoradiotherapy, reaching 42.9 percent five-year survival against 33.4; ALEX moved first-line ALK treatment to a brain-penetrant drug; TRACERx showed copy-number heterogeneity carries a hazard ratio of 4.9 for recurrence or death.
Mobile CT scanners parked in supermarket car parks in the areas with the highest lung cancer rates, inviting ever-smokers aged 55 to 74 through their GP records and scanning those a risk model placed above threshold. The first phase invited about 900,000 people and found more than 2,000 cancers, 76 percent of them early stage against 29 percent outside the programme.
Volume CT at baseline and years 1, 3 and 5.5 in 13,195 men and 2,594 women aged 50 to 74 in the Netherlands and Belgium: a lung cancer death rate ratio of 0.76 at ten years in men and 0.67 in women, with only 2.1 percent referred for a suspicious nodule, a tenth of the American false-positive burden.
The 2021 WHO Classification of Thoracic Tumours added a chapter on classifying small diagnostic samples, graded invasive non-mucinous adenocarcinoma by growth pattern, recognised spread through air spaces and thoracic SMARCA4-deficient undifferentiated tumour, and moved lymphoepithelial carcinoma into the squamous cell carcinomas. In the same year the US Preventive Services Task Force widened screening to 50 to 80 years and 20 pack-years.
The United States task force lowered eligibility to age 50 and 20 pack-years, two years after Aldrich showed 31 percent of white smokers qualified against 17 percent of Black smokers; IMpower010 showed adjuvant atezolizumab delays recurrence, mainly in PD-L1-positive stage II to IIIA disease.
After an evidence review and a health economic model, the committee recommended in June 2022 that all four UK nations move towards targeted lung cancer screening at 55 to 74 with integrated smoking cessation, and named the Targeted Lung Health Check programme as a feasible starting point.
Announced on 26 June 2023 at a cost of £270 million a year once fully implemented, expected to deliver almost one million scans and find as many as 9,000 cancers a year, using GP records to identify ever-smokers aged 55 to 74 and a risk model to decide who is scanned every two years.
PM2.5 was shown to promote rather than initiate EGFR-driven lung cancer, with oncogenic EGFR mutations in 18 percent of histologically normal lungs; FLAURA2 and AEGEAN reported, and tarlatamab gave a 40 percent response rate in twice-treated small-cell disease.
ALINA gave adjuvant alectinib after resection of ALK-positive disease (93.8 against 63.0 percent disease-free at two years), LAURA gave osimertinib after chemoradiotherapy in EGFR-mutant stage III (39.1 against 5.6 months), MARIPOSA beat osimertinib in first line, and ADRIATIC lifted limited-stage small-cell survival from 33.4 to 55.9 months.
From 1 January 2025 lung cancer is staged by the ninth edition: the T descriptors unchanged, N2 split into N2a and N2b by the number of mediastinal stations involved, M1c split into M1c1 and M1c2 by the number of organ systems, and the stage groups moved to follow (T1N1 to IIA, T1N2a to IIB, T3N2a to IIIA, T2aN2b and T2bN2b to IIIB).
Over two million people invited and 7,193 lung cancers diagnosed to March 2025, 63.1 percent at stage 1 and 12.6 percent at stage 2, with the early-stage share of all lung cancer in England rising over the five years and rising most in the most deprived regions. Full national coverage is expected in 2030.
ADRIATIC's study completion is listed for 23 October 2026, IMpower010 for 31 August 2027, FLAURA2 for 30 September 2027, LAURA for 29 October 2027, MARIPOSA for 16 February 2028, DeLLphi-304 for 26 March 2028, AEGEAN for 11 September 2028, CROWN for 31 December 2028 and ALINA for 19 November 2031; TRACERx runs to November 2035.