TABLE 2.

Some drugs and their mechanism of action in lung cancer therapy.

Major categories of lung cancer drug therapy	Mechanism of action	Drugs
Chemotherapy	Platinum: By binding to the DNA in the nucleus, it destroys the DNA of tumor cells and induces apoptosis (Dilruba and Kalayda, 2016).	Platinum: cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin
	Taxane-type anticancer drugs: Through the unique microtubule stabilization mechanism, they act on the mitotic process, thus reducing the proliferation of cancer cells (Wen et al., 2016).	Taxane-type anticancer drugs: paclitaxel, docetaxel and cabazitaxel
	Gemcitabine: By infiltrating the intracellular DNA, it inhibits DNA synthesis, and ultimately leads to apoptosis (Mlak et al., 2016).	Gemcitabine
	Etoposide(VP-16): It acts on DNA topoisomerase II, causing DNA damage and promoting apoptosis (Nam et al., 2010).	Etoposide (VP-16)
Targeted therapy	Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs): It can inhibit the growth and induce apoptosis of tumor cells by inhibiting the two signal transduction pathways of RAS/RAF/MAPK/ERK and PI3K/AKT/mTOR. (Dienstmann et al., 2011).	Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs): gefitinib and erlotinib
	Receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) inhibitor: Anti-tumor angiogenesis by selectively inhibiting vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 (EGFR-2) (Li et al., 2010; Ding et al., 2013).	Apatinib
Immunotherapy	Programmed cell death (PD)-1 immune checkpoint inhibitors: By combining with PD-1 receptor highly expressed on T cells, it can block the signal pathway induced by PD-L1 and PD-L2, and restore the function of T cells (Wang et al., 2014; Oya et al., 2017).	Nivolumab,pembrolizumab
Natural antitumor products	Combining the tumor targeting carriers with natural anti-tumor drugs in an appropriate way can improve the anti-tumor efficacy (Jin et al., 2018).	Parthenolide,ginsenoside compound K
	• Parthenolide: It can achieve anti-tumor effect by inhibiting B-Raf/MAPK/Erk signaling pathway, inhibiting NF-κB activation, and inhibiting PI3K/AKT signaling pathway (Jeyamohan et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2017; Lin et al., 2017).
	• CK: It can induce apoptosis through glycogen synthase kinase 3β(GSK3β) signaling pathway and regulating reactive oxygen species (ROS). It can inhibit angiogenesis by inhibiting sphingosine kinase -1 (Kim et al., 2013; Shin et al., 2014; Kwak et al., 2015)