Ceritinib: a new first-line therapy against ALK-rearranged lung cancer?

About 20% of Caucasian non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients (1), and 50% of Eastern Asian ones (2), are diagnosed with an oncogene-addicted disease, due to the presence of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) activating mutations or anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) and proto-oncogene tyrosine-protein kinase ROS (ROS1) rearrangements. These gene alterations identify patients who benefit from the use of correspondent inhibitors. On the other hand, in this era of personalized medicine, most NSCLC patients do not harbor such genetic alterations, thus chemotherapy represents the standard-of-care for first-line therapy (3,4).