Lung cancer, the most prevalent and deadly malignancy in the world, poses a particularly critical healthcare challenge to China due to the rapidly increasing new cases and the unique cancer genetics in Chinese patient population. Substantial progress has been made in molecular diagnosis and personalized treatment of the disease. The field is now moving towards multiple new directions to include (1) new generation of targeted agents such as epidermal growth factor receptor and anaplastic lymphoma kinase inhibitors to overcome resistance to their early generation counterparts; and (2) deeper understanding of tumor genetics of each individual patient and consequently the application of biomarkers to guide personalized treatment as well as novel drug development including combination therapy. The increasing capacity in innovative cancer drug research and development is supported by extensive collaboration within China and globally, and across academia and industry, to build up expertise and infrastructure in early-phase clinical testing of novel drugs. With these combined efforts, new and better medicines will be available for lung cancer patients in China in the near future.
Antineoplastic Agents ; Biomarkers ; China ; Combined Modality Therapy ; Humans ; Lung Neoplasms ; Pharmacogenetics ; Precision Medicine ; Receptor Protein-Tyrosine Kinases ; Receptor, Epidermal Growth Factor

Humans ; Sarcoma, Clear Cell/pathology* ; Melanoma/pathology* ; Skin Neoplasms/pathology* ; Diagnostic Errors ; Soft Tissue Neoplasms ; Melanoma, Cutaneous Malignant

Humans ; Chondromatosis, Synovial/pathology* ; Chondrosarcoma/pathology*

Chigger mites is a group of arthropods and some of them are vectors of scrub typhus. As a common synanthropic rodent species, the Brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) often harbors lots of ectoparasites including chigger mites. According to some “data mining” strategies, the present study took the advantage of the abundant original data from a long-term field ecological investigation between 2001 and 2015 to make a detailed analysis of chigger mites on R. norvegicus in Yunnan Province, Southwest of China. From 18 of 33 investigated counties, only 1414 chigger mites were collected from 1113 Brown rats with relatively low infestations. The 1414 individual chigger mites were identified as comprising 61 species, 11 genera and 2 subfamilies of the family Trombiculidae with a high species diversity (S=61, H’=3.13). Of 61 mite species, there were four main species, Walchia ewingi, Ascoschoengastia indica, W. koi and A. rattinorvegici, which accounted for 44.41% of the total mites. All the chigger mites were of aggregated distribution among different individuals of R. norvegicus. The Brown rats in the outdoor habitats harbored much more individuals and species of chigger mites with a higher mean abundance (MA=1.46) and mean intensity (MI=12.53) than in the indoor habitats (P<0.05). The overall infestation of the rats was significantly higher in the mountainous landscapes than in the flatland landscapes (P<0.001). The species similarity (Css) of the mites on the male and female rats reached 64.44% with sex biased infestations. The male rats harbored more species and individuals of the mites than the female rats. The adult rats harbored more species and individuals of the mites than the juvenile rats. The species abundance distribution of the mites was successfully fitted by Preston’s lognormal model with S ^ (R)=15e–[0.31(R–1)]2 (α=0.31, R2=0.95). On the basis of fitting the theoretical curve by Preston’s model, the total mite species on R. norvegicus was estimated to be 86 species, and 25 rare mite species were missed in the sampling field investigation. The curve tendency of the species-plot relationship indicates that R. norvegicus have a great potential to harbor many species of chigger mites, and more species of the mites would be collected if more rats are sampled.