Azacitidine and Entinostat in Treating Patients With Newly Diagnosed Stage IA-IIIA Non-Small Lung Cancer Undergoing Surgery

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES: I. To measure reversal of aberrant genome-wide promoter methylation and gene re-expression in paired, pre- and post- treatment lung tumor tissue pairs from patients with newly diagnosed, surgically resectable non-small cell lung cancer before and after exposure to a single neoadjuvant cycle of 5-azacytidine (azacitidine) and entinostat. SECONDARY OBJECTIVES: I. To measure the 3-year disease-free survival of operable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients who receive 1 cycle of preoperative epigenetic treatment. II. To determine any potential toxicities, and reversibility of toxicities, of a single pre-operative cycle of 5-azacytidine and entinostat. OUTLINE: Patients receive azacitidine subcutaneously (SC) on days 1-6 and 8-10 and entinostat orally (PO) on days 3 and 10. Patients undergo surgery between days 11-20 (this period can be extended 10 more days if adverse events from therapy impose a surgical risk). After completion of study treatment, patients are followed up at 4 weeks, every 3 months for 2 years and then every 6 months for 1 year.