Proton beam therapy as a promising option for high-risk limited stage small cell lung cancer: revealing potential of future novel agents

Abstract

Radiotherapy (RT) is the main local treatment for limited-stage small-cell lung cancer (LS-SCLC). No-tably, SCLC is extremely sensitive to radiotherapy. Turrisi et al. [1] demonstrated the oncological benefit of high radiation doses by showing the survival benefit of a 45 Gy/1.5 Gy bid protocol compared to the conventional 45 Gy in 25 fractions treatment. Recently, Faivre-Finn et al. [2] reported that treatment with 66 Gy in 33 fractions could achieve a survival similar to that of the bid regimen. Ref-erencing the literature on non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), dose-escalation beyond 60–66 Gy is not always successful and has the potential to increase toxicity [3