Until the 80s, receiving a diagnosis of lung cancer was a death sentence; you had six months to live. With the arrival of chemotherapy, the prognosis for patients improved slightly, with patients living for over a year thanks to treatment. But ten years ago, there was a real revolution with the emergence of immunotherapies, which stimulate the patient's defenses to attack malignant cells and have achieved survival rates of five, six, or even more years after diagnosis. However, they are not perfect. Tumors eventually develop resistance to treatment, and lung cancer remains the most lethal: it is the leading cause of death from cancer worldwide.

A quarter of lung cancer cases occur in people who have never smoked, and a study published Wednesday in Nature suggests that the global increase in these tumors in this group is closely linked to air pollution and other environmental exposures. The research, led by researchers from the University of California, San Diego, and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), analyzed the tumors of more than 870 nonsmokers from different regions of the world.