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Abstract
Lung cancer is one of the most common causes of cancer related death around the world, with non small cell lung cancer representing approximately 80% of the cases.
Patients with advanced stages of NSCLC are treated by chemotherapy alone or in combination with a local treatment modality. As the benefit of combination chemotherapy in metastatic disease is limited, it is very important to identify biological marker able to predict response to chemotherapy.
During the last years it became more and more evident that tumorigenesis is not only the result of excessive proliferation due to the activation of oncogenes but it also depends on impairment of apoptosis.
Many proteins have been identified as inhibitors of apoptosis or programmed cell death, and so have a role in development of cancer. Survivin is the well-known member of the inhibitor of the apoptosis protein (IAP family).
In NSCLC survivin has been shown to be highly expressed in most tumor cells and absent in normal cells. Also it was found that survivin expression in tumors is associated with more aggressive phenotype, shorter survival times and decreased response to chemotherapy.
Several therapeutic approaches have been identified to disrupt survivin expression or function as antisense oligonucleotides and small molecule antagonist.
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