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Henning Willers, Theodore S. Hong, Towards an Integrated Understanding of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Biology for Radiation Therapy: Integrins Enter, JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Volume 107, Issue 2, February 2015, dju440, https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/dju440
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It is clear that a huge body of preclinical data on combined radiation and radiosensitizing targeted drugs has not translated into an adequate number of successful radiation oncology trials. In light of this discordance, recent National Cancer Institute (NCI)–Radiation Therapy Oncology (RTOG) guidelines have emphasized the need to develop better preclinical models ( 1 ). The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) has been intensely studied as a target for radiation therapy for more than a decade, but despite their considerable promise the benefit of EGFR-directed radiosensitizers in clinical practice remains to be fully realized ( 2–4 ). It is tempting to speculate that we still do not know EGFR biology well enough, which bears some similarity to KRAS ( 5 ), and this prevents us from optimally exploiting EGFR for radiation therapy. Better preclinical models that provide an integrated understanding of EGFR biology and account for clinical tumor heterogeneity are urgently needed.
