Biomarkers in non-small cell lung cancer: focus on angiogenesis

In roughly forty percent of patients who undergo surgery for non-small cell lung cancer, the original tumour will return within two years of surgery. Additional chemotherapy following surgery results in an average five-year survival gain of approximately 4%. To date, it remains unclear which patients are at risk of recurrent lung cancer and what the survival benefits of this potentially toxic treatment may be. This dissertation demonstrates that molecular biomarkers targeting angiogenesis have a prognostic value for the risk of recurrent lung cancer.
The applicability of new imaging techniques (DCE-MRI, H215O-PET and 18F-PET) in the response evaluation of patients with metastatic lung cancer was also evaluated. These techniques give us more insight into the tumour biology of individual patients and may help to determine the (failure) response of targeted therapeutic interventions at an earlier stage.