Cover caption

Abstract

The prognosis for patients with lung cancer remains very poor despite advances in combination chemotherapy, radiation and targeted therapy. Moreover, although progress has been made in understanding the genes important in non-small cell lung adenocarcinomas, much less is known about squamous cell carcinomas. In the current issue of Cancer Biology & Therapy, Matthew Meyerson and colleagues in Ramos et al. use genomic approaches to demonstrate amplification of 4q12 in NSCLC. The cover image, taken from their manuscript, uses FISH to demonstrate that PDGFRA (red) is amplified in this patient sample of lung adenocarcinoma. The green staining is a probe for a reference sequence also on chromosome 4. In this sample, PDGFRA is clearly amplified compared to the reference sequence. To learn more about the effects of targeted therapies on the lung cancer cell lines with amplification of PDGFRA, oncogene addiction and sensitivity to targeted therapy see the article by Ramos et al. as well as the commentary by Burrell and Swanton.