Bringing the genomic landscape of small-cell lung cancer into focus

Genomic characterization efforts in small-cell lung cancer have been complicated by the paucity of high-quality surgical resection specimens for this aggressive lung cancer subtype that is usually diagnosed at unresectable stages in small biopsies or cytology specimens. Now, two papers report genomic analyses of small-cell lung cancer, highlighting subsets of tumors driven by amplification of FGFR1, SOX2 or MYC family members or by a MYCL1 fusion oncogene, among many other recurrent alterations.