lung

Adenocarcinoma in situ and minimally invasive adenocarcinoma are the earliest forms of lung cancer of the adenocarcinoma type: small tumours, usually seen as ground-glass spots on a CT scan, that have not yet invaded, or have invaded less than five millimetres. When removed they are effectively cured, with no recurrences in the large series, so the question is how little surgery is enough.

Lung adenocarcinoma is the most common type of lung cancer and the form that non-smokers usually get; it starts in the mucus-making gland cells of the small airways, most often at the edge of the lung. It is the type in which testing for a driver mutation matters most, because half of cases have one that a tablet can target.

Adenosquamous carcinoma is an uncommon lung cancer that contains both gland-forming and squamous cancer cells, each making up at least a tenth of the tumour. It behaves worse than either pure type, but its gland-forming part often carries an EGFR mutation, so it is tested and treated like adenocarcinoma.

The Newcastle oncologist who led the NHS England pilot that put a blood test for lung cancer mutations into the diagnostic pathway, and who co-leads the CONCORDE radiotherapy platform.

Lung cancer doctor whose trials at Massachusetts General Hospital showed that crizotinib works in ROS1-rearranged lung cancer and defined how ALK-positive tumours become resistant to targeted drugs.

ALK-positive lung cancer is driven by a fused ALK gene and is treated with a pill from the start. The newest inhibitors keep the disease under control for years, with lorlatinib holding six in ten patients progression-free at five years, and two years of alectinib after surgery cuts recurrence by three quarters.

A mineral once used everywhere in building, whose fibres lodge in the lung when they are breathed in and cause cancer decades later. It causes both mesothelioma, the cancer of the lining around the lung, and lung cancer itself, and the two are different diseases with different pathways.

Basaloid squamous cell carcinoma is a variant of squamous lung cancer made of small, dark, tightly packed cells that grow in nests; survival in the source series was lower than in other squamous cell carcinoma. No trial exists in the variant alone, so the parent's evidence applies: it is treated as squamous lung cancer by stage, and its high PD-L1 is why checkpoint inhibitors are used.

The British trial that asked, without enthusiasm or spin, what chemotherapy is actually worth in lung cancer, and found it worth nine weeks in advanced disease and nothing at all after surgery or radiotherapy.

BRAF V600E lung cancer carries the same mutation as many melanomas and is treated with the same pairs of pills that block BRAF and MEK together. Dabrafenib with trametinib and encorafenib with binimetinib each shrink about two thirds to three quarters of untreated tumours.

A British radiotherapy schedule, invented at Mount Vernon, that squeezed a six-week course into twelve days and cut the risk of death by about a quarter.

Led the crizotinib and brigatinib trials that defined ALK-targeted lung cancer therapy.

The Nottingham chest physician who chairs the UK clinical expert group for lung cancer and advises the National Screening Committee: the person whose job it is to turn the screening evidence into an NHS service.

Principal investigator of the National Lung Screening Trial, which first proved CT screening saves lives.

EGFR-mutated lung cancer is driven by a single faulty growth receptor and is treated first with a pill rather than chemotherapy. Osimertinib keeps the disease under control for about a year and a half on average, adding chemotherapy or the antibody amivantamab extends that further, and three years of osimertinib after surgery roughly halves the risk of death in early-stage disease.

A camera with an ultrasound probe on its tip is passed down the windpipe; the ultrasound finds the lymph nodes sitting just outside the airway wall and a needle is passed through the wall to sample them. It is how lung cancer is staged without an operation.

Small-cell lung cancer that has spread responds fast to chemotherapy but almost always returns within a year. Adding an immunotherapy antibody to first-line chemotherapy helps a minority live for years, and the T-cell engager tarlatamab, which points immune cells at the DLL3 protein on the cancer, has for the first time lengthened life after relapse.

Led CodeBreaK 100, the trial that made sotorasib the first approved KRAS inhibitor, and showed STK11/KEAP1 co-mutations blunt immunotherapy.

The Birmingham oncologist who ran the National Lung Matrix Trial, the largest umbrella trial in lung cancer, and published the honest answer: most drug-biomarker pairs did not work.

Lung cancer doctor who led PHAROS, the trial that brought the encorafenib and binimetinib pair to BRAF V600E-mutant lung cancer.

Coughing up blood, or blood-streaked phlegm. It has many causes other than cancer, including chest infection, but it is the one lung symptom that sends a person aged 40 or over straight onto the suspected cancer pathway rather than to an X-ray first.

Led the NELSON trial, which confirmed CT screening cuts lung cancer deaths in Europe and shaped screening policy.

HER2-mutant lung cancer carries a mutation in the same receptor that drives HER2-positive breast cancer, but the breast cancer antibodies alone did little here. The antibody-drug conjugate trastuzumab deruxtecan shrinks about half of tumours after chemotherapy, and the pill zongertinib about seven in ten, and both are approved.

Invasive mucinous adenocarcinoma is a type of lung cancer whose cells look like stomach or bowel lining and fill the air spaces with mucus, often appearing as pneumonia-like shadows on a scan. Most cases carry a KRAS mutation, and many of the rest carry a gene fusion, including NRG1, that new drugs can target.

Led RTOG 0617, the trial that showed higher radiation doses do not help in stage III lung cancer and set today's 60 Gy standard.

Led the trials comparing stereotactic radiotherapy with surgery for operable early lung cancer.

The Liverpool scientist behind the UK Lung Cancer Screening trial and the Liverpool Lung Project risk model, which is one of the two rules the NHS uses to decide who is invited for a scan.

The surgeon on CheckMate 816 who showed neoadjuvant immunotherapy does not make lung cancer operations harder.

Korean lung cancer specialist who led CHRYSALIS, the first human study of amivantamab, whose exon 20 insertion cohort earned the drug its first approval.

KRAS G12C lung cancer carries a mutation that was thought impossible to drug for forty years. Sotorasib and adagrasib now shrink about four in ten tumours after chemotherapy and immunotherapy, though the benefit is measured in months, and newer inhibitors and first-line combinations with immunotherapy are in trials.

Large cell carcinoma is the name for a non-small-cell lung cancer whose cells look neither glandular nor squamous under the microscope. Since 2015 pathologists use protein stains to sort most of these tumours into adenocarcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma, so a true large cell diagnosis is now rare and is treated like adenocarcinoma.

Large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma is a lung cancer that looks like a large-cell tumour under the microscope but has the neuroendocrine markers and the fast, aggressive behaviour of small-cell lung cancer. It sits between the two halves of the usual split, which is why teams disagree about whether to treat it as one or the other.

Small-cell lung cancer that is still confined to one side of the chest is treated to cure with chemotherapy and radiotherapy given together. Adding two years of the immunotherapy antibody durvalumab afterwards lengthened median survival from under three years to over four and a half, the first improvement in this disease in decades.

Lung cancer is the commonest cause of death among people who develop a second cancer, and chest radiotherapy raises the risk of it for more than twenty years. There is no screening programme aimed at survivors anywhere, although some survivor groups have a measured rate above the threshold at which lung screening was shown to save lives, so this is a gap rather than a settled answer.

Lung cancer in someone who has never smoked. About 15 percent of UK lung cancers and 15 to 25 percent worldwide. It is usually adenocarcinoma, commoner in women, more likely to carry a mutation a drug can target, and invisible to every screening rule, because they all start from smoking history.

Lung neuroendocrine tumours, called typical and atypical carcinoids, are slow-growing tumours of the airways that are usually cured by surgery. When they spread, everolimus is the one drug tested in a randomised trial for this site, cabozantinib was approved in 2025, and somatostatin analogues and lutetium radioligand therapy are borrowed from gut tumours.

The scoring systems that turn a screening CT into an action. Each nodule gets a category from the scan, and the category dictates the next step: rescan in a year, rescan in three months, or go to a lung cancer clinic. They exist so that the same scan gets the same answer in every centre.

The British trial that tested a cheap, staged alternative to scanning everyone, and found it did not work: more than half the cancers never showed up in the sputum at all.

Lymphoepithelial carcinoma of the lung is a rare lung cancer, seen mostly in East Asian non-smokers, in which cancer cells sit in a dense crowd of immune cells and usually carry the Epstein-Barr virus, like nasopharyngeal cancer. It is treated as a squamous lung cancer, and its high PD-L1 levels have made immunotherapy a natural choice.

Fluid collecting in the space between the lung and the chest wall because cancer has reached the lining. It makes people breathless, it comes back after it is drained, and the decision is not whether to drain it but how to stop it returning.

Led KEYNOTE-024, the trial that made pembrolizumab alone first-line therapy for PD-L1-high lung cancer.

The Leeds respiratory physician who ran the Yorkshire Lung Screening Trial, the trial that worked out which risk rule the NHS should use to decide who gets a screening scan.

Lung cancer doctor who was the lead author of CheckMate 227, the trial that showed the immunotherapy pair nivolumab and ipilimumab helps people with advanced lung cancer live longer than chemotherapy alone.

The lymph nodes in the chest are numbered by position on an agreed map, so that a scan, a needle biopsy and an operation in different hospitals all mean the same thing. Which numbered stations contain cancer decides the N category and therefore whether surgery is on the table.

MET-driven lung cancer comes in three forms: an exon 14 skipping mutation treated with the pills capmatinib or tepotinib, MET amplification that often arises as an escape route from EGFR drugs, and high c-Met protein levels that the antibody-drug conjugate telisotuzumab vedotin targets.

Myung-Ju Ahn is one of Asia's most prolific lung cancer trialists, a steady presence on the steering committees of the EGFR, ALK, and immunotherapy trials that set today's standards.

Non-small-cell lung cancer is the proving ground for precision medicine: a dozen targetable mutations each with a matched pill, immunotherapy for the rest, and ADCs and bispecifics arriving now. Because most cases are still found late, low-dose CT screening is the other half of the story.

NTRK fusion lung cancer is very rare and is treated with the same TRK-blocking pills approved for any cancer with the fusion: larotrectinib, entrectinib or repotrectinib shrink most tumours, including in the brain, so the point is to test broadly enough to find it.

The unit used to measure how much someone has smoked over a lifetime: one pack-year is twenty cigarettes a day for one year. Twenty a day for thirty years, or forty a day for fifteen, are both thirty pack-years.

A lung cancer growing at the very top of the lung, where it presses on the nerves going to the arm and the nerves that control the eyelid and pupil. It usually announces itself as shoulder and arm pain rather than as a chest problem, so it is often treated as a shoulder injury first.

Lung cancer doctor who was lead author of VISION, the trial that established tepotinib for lung cancers with MET exon 14 skipping mutations.

Lung cancers that carry a lot of PD-L1 and no targetable mutation can be treated with an immunotherapy antibody alone instead of chemotherapy. Pembrolizumab keeps about a third of patients alive at five years, roughly double what chemotherapy achieved, and adding chemotherapy is reserved for those who need a fast response.

The Manchester respiratory physician who showed that if you park a CT scanner in a supermarket car park in a poor part of the city, people come, and the cancers you find are early ones.

Inflammation of the lung tissue itself, caused by a treatment rather than an infection. It shows up as a new cough, breathlessness on exertion or a fall in oxygen levels, and it is the reason a new breathlessness on immunotherapy, an antibody-drug conjugate or chest radiotherapy is treated as an emergency until proved otherwise.

Pulmonary blastoma is a very rare lung cancer of adults that mixes a fetal-looking gland component with a primitive sarcoma-like component, and so belongs with the sarcomatoid lung cancers. It is different from the pleuropulmonary blastoma of young children. Surgery is the treatment; chemotherapy has no proven benefit and the outlook is poor.

A small round shadow in the lung on a CT scan, usually under 3 cm. Most are scars or old infections, not cancer. What decides the next step is size, density and whether it grows between scans, which is why so many are simply rescanned rather than biopsied.

Chinese thoracic oncologist behind HARMONi-2, where the PD-1/VEGF bispecific ivonescimab beat pembrolizumab head to head.

A radioactive gas that seeps out of the ground into buildings, with no smell and no taste. It is the largest natural source of radiation most people meet and the second commonest cause of lung cancer after smoking. A home can be tested with a posted detector and, if the level is high, fixed.

Two separate questions are hidden in the word operable. Can the tumour be removed completely with a margin, which is anatomy? And can this person survive the operation and live without the lung tissue it takes, which is physiology? A no to either makes the cancer unresectable, for different reasons and with different alternatives.

Lung cancer caught before it has spread is treated with surgery, now often keyhole or robotic and sometimes removing only part of a lobe. Immunotherapy given before and after the operation, or a targeted pill afterwards for EGFR or ALK tumours, cuts the chance of the cancer coming back by between a third and four fifths.