Tarceva Surgery for Resectable Stage IIIA(N2) and IIIB (T4 N2) Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer

This is a phase II, single institution open label randomized trial of induction carboplatin and paclitaxel plus/minus daily oral OSI-774 in patients with potentially resectable NSCLC that is stage IIIA and IIIB (T4 satellite nodules or invasion into T4 structures but no malignant effusion.) N3 disease is excluded. Patients will be required to have pathologically demonstrated N2 disease via mediastinoscopy. Forty patients will be treated with 3 courses of chemotherapy followed by surgery. Ten of these patients will be randomized to chemotherapy alone and 30 patients to chemotherapy plus OSI-774. The 10 patients will serve as a chemotherapy alone control for molecular endpoint analysis. OSI-774 will be stopped the night before surgery. At the time of surgery, pathologic response will be determined. Following surgery, patients will be treated with consolidation radiation therapy if there are positive margins or N2 lymph nodes at the time of resection. Patients who have no N2 disease at surgery will have the option of consolidation radiation therapy but will not be required to have it done. Patients not able to tolerate radiation even if they have N2 disease or positive margins at surgery may continue on this study. This will be followed by maintenance OSI-774 for patients from both arms of the study. OSI-774 will be continued as maintenance to a maximum of 2 years following surgery. Tissue for molecular studies will be obtained pretreatment either at the time of diagnostic biopsy or mediastinoscopy. Post-treatment tissue will be obtained at the time of surgery. This tissue will be assayed for defined molecular endpoints using immunohistochemistry, immunoprecipitation and mRNA expression analysis. Blood, urine, hair follicles, and skin samples will also be collected from patients who consent to provide these.