Long-term survival in the ALEX trial: a milestone in improving the prognosis of patients with ALK-positive non-small-cell lung cancer

Recent progress in the treatment of patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has changed outcomes remarkably. Nowadays, the median progression-free survival (PFS) on first-line treatment with the third-generation ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) lorlatinib exceeds 5 years, which has not been reported before in metastatic lung cancer.1,2 The practice-changing ALEX study investigated alectinib versus crizotinib in…