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Received — 13 September 2026 ⏭

Narrative review of the staging classification controversy in stage N3 small cell lung cancer: from the perspective of overlapping Veterans Administration Lung Study Group and International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer definitions

✇(Multiomics OR Omics) AND (Lung OR gastric OR Hepatocellular)
By: Xinyu Chen · Qilin Wang · Juncai Ye · Xueping Yang · Jiahao Chen · Guangzeng Zhou · Chuanyu You · Tian Xu · Yan Gui
11 September 2026 at 18:00

J Thorac Dis. 2026 Aug 31;18(8):950. doi: 10.21037/jtd-2026-1704. Epub 2026 Aug 28.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Traditionally, two primary systems have been employed for staging small cell lung cancer (SCLC): the Veterans Administration Lung Study Group (VALG) system and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) tumor, node, metastasis (TNM) system. The term "limited disease" is defined differently: VALG characterizes it as disease encompassed within a single tolerable radiation field, while IASLC defines it as the lack of distant metastases (M0). Patients with N3 disease frequently satisfy VALG extensive-stage (ES) criteria while meeting IASLC limited-stage (LS) criteria, resulting in a notable staging discrepancy. Therefore, this review aims to clarify the clinical challenges posed by this staging overlap and provide insights for standardizing staging terminology and optimizing therapeutic decision-making in N3 SCLC.

METHODS: A narrative review utilizing a systematized search strategy was conducted. While strict adherence to PRISMA guidelines was not pursued because the extensive heterogeneity of the literature precluded a formal meta-analysis, rigorous search criteria were applied to minimize selection bias. Databases including PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, the Cochrane Library, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were searched for literature from January 2000 to March 2026. Studies examining stage N3 SCLC, spatial metastatic burden, and definitional inconsistencies between the VALG and IASLC staging systems were analyzed to assess their effects on treatment dosimetry, systemic therapy, and survival outcomes.

KEY CONTENT AND FINDINGS: The staging overlap in N3 SCLC leads to heterogeneous clinical management depending on its spatial metastatic burden, and this highly variable cohort can be stratified into distinct prognostic subgroups based on the anatomical distribution (single-region vs. multi-region) of the involved lymph nodes.

CONCLUSIONS: These findings should guide clinical trial design and terminology. Clinical decision-making must transcend historical paradigms and technical constraints. Future strategies must incorporate spatial evaluations of metastatic burden alongside innovative multimodal tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and multi-omics, to facilitate tailored therapy for SCLC.

PMID:42724560 | PMC:PMC13559235 | DOI:10.21037/jtd-2026-1704

Received — 8 April 2026 ⏭

Xpertbench: Expert Level Tasks with Rubrics-Based Evaluation

✇cs.AI, q-bio.NC updates on arXiv.org
By: Xue Liu · Xin Ma · Yuxin Ma · Yongchang Peng · Duo Wang · Zhoufutu Wen · Ge Zhang · Kaiyuan Zhang · Xinyu Chen · Tianci He · Jiani Hou · Liang Hu · Ziyun Huang · Yongzhe Hui · Jianpeng Jiao · Chennan Ju · Yingru Kong · Yiran Li · Mengyun Liu · Luyao Ma · Fei Ni · Yiqing Ni · Yueyan Qiu · Yanle Ren · Zilin Shi · Zaiyuan Wang · Wenjie Yue · Shiyu Zhang · Xinyi Zhang · Kaiwen Zhao · Zhenwei Zhu · Shanshan Wu · Qi Zhao · Wenhao Huang
7 April 2026 at 12:00
arXiv:2604.02368v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit plateauing performance on conventional benchmarks, a pivotal challenge persists: evaluating their proficiency in complex, open-ended tasks characterizing genuine expert-level cognition. Existing frameworks suffer from narrow domain coverage, reliance on generalist tasks, or self-evaluation biases. To bridge this gap, we present XpertBench, a high-fidelity benchmark engineered to assess LLMs across authentic professional domains. XpertBench consists of 1,346 meticulously curated tasks across 80 categories, spanning finance, healthcare, legal services, education, and dual-track research (STEM and Humanities). These tasks are derived from over 1,000 submissions by domain experts--including researchers from elite institutions and practitioners with extensive clinical or industrial experience--ensuring superior ecological validity. Each task uses detailed rubrics with mostly 15-40 weighted checkpoints to assess professional rigor. To facilitate scalable yet human-aligned assessment, we introduce ShotJudge, a novel evaluation paradigm that employs LLM judges calibrated with expert few-shot exemplars to mitigate self-rewarding biases. Our empirical evaluation of state-of-the-art LLMs reveals a pronounced performance ceiling: even leading models achieve a peak success rate of only ~66%, with a mean score around 55%. Models also exhibit domain-specific divergence, showing non-overlapping strengths in quantitative reasoning versus linguistic synthesis.. These findings underscore a significant "expert-gap" in current AI systems and establish XpertBench as a critical instrument for navigating the transition from general-purpose assistants to specialized professional collaborators.
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