Thoracic malignancies include tumours of the lung, pleura and mediastinum. Among those, lung cancer is by far the most frequent entity, and represents the first cause of cancer-related death worldwide. The vast majority of patients are diagnosed with advanced disease, preventing curative treatment (mostly consisting of surgical resection with or without adjuvant chemotherapy) from being performed [1]. Until recently, the treatment of these patients was confined to cytotoxic chemotherapy, which, over the past years, has been optimised through histology-driven decision making of regimens, combination with anti-angiogenic agents and development of maintenance strategies [1, 2]. The median overall survival of patients has been improved from an abyssal 8 months in the late 1990s to 15 months in the most recent phase III trials of the 2010s, but novel strategies are clearly needed [2].
Meanwhile, major progress has been achieved in the understanding of the molecular bases of lung cancer. Data from genomic, expression, mutational and proteomic profiling studies have emerged, first …