Successful treatment of Afatinib plus Apatinib using for a lung adenocarcinoma patient with HER-2 V659D mutation: a rare case report

Lung cancer is one of the most important and lethal cancers in the world. Human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2) is a member of the erbB receptor tyrosine kinase family. The incidence of HER2 kinase domain mutations in adenocarcinoma of lung ranges from 1% to 3%. HER2 V659D mutation is located in the trans-membrane domain (TMD) with only a few cases reported before, and importantly, there were no more standard and effective ways for this kind of diseases until now. Afatinib irreversibly blocks all kinase-competent HER family members. Apatinib is one of the small-molecule oral anti-angiogenesis-targeted agents developed firstly in China, and it's a highly selective inhibition of the activity of VEGFR-2. This report presents an advanced lung adenocarcinoma patient with HER2 V659D mutation who was treated with combination of Afatinib and Apatinib. He achieved good efficacy and tolerable adverse reactions.