Commonly Used Drugs

Drugs Commonly Used for Treating Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Chemotherapy

• Cisplatin, doxorubicin and cytoxan (under clinical evaluation)
• Pre-operative Cisplatin and vindesine with or without mitomycin-C (under clinical evaluation)
• Carboplatin-containing regimens

Hormones (not useful for lung cancer)

Biological Response Modifiers (not proven to be useful thus far)

Drugs Commonly Used for Treating Small Cell Lung Cancer

Chemotherapy

• All patients should receive combination chemotherapy regardless of the extent of disease.
• VPP--Etoposide (VP-16) and cisplatin, with or without other agents such as vincristine, methotrexate and adriamycin.
• CAV--Cytoxan, adriamycin, and vincristine
• CAVP-16--Cytoxan, adriamycin and etoposide
• Cytoxan, methotrexate and lomustine
• Cytoxan, methotrexate, lomustine and vincristine
• Cytoxan, adriamycin, etoposide and vincristine
• CEV--Cytoxan, etoposide, and vincristine

Hormones (not useful for lung cancer)

Biological Response Modifiers (not proven to be useful thus far)

Other Modalities

Endoscopic photodynamic therapy (under clinical evaluation for non-small cell lung cancer)

Cancer Vaccines: Cancer vaccines are still in the experimental phase and are not coded in this data item. They may be coded in the field Other Therapy. Currently clinical trials use cancer vaccines for brain, breast, colon, kidney, lung, melanoma and ovary.

BMT Autologous: Uses the patient's own bone marrow and/or stem cells. The tumor cells are filtered out and the purified blood and stem cells are returned to the patient.

Note: Used for breast cancer, lymphoma, leukemia, aplastic anemia, myeloma, germ cell tumors, ovarian cancer, and small cell lung cancer.

To learn more about chemotherapy, see the Cancer Treatment module.