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Administration of the heme precursor 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) leads to the selective accumulation of the photosensitizer protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) in certain types of normal and abnormal tissues. This phenomenon has been exploited clinically for detection and treatment of a variety of malignant and nonmalignant lesions. The present preclinical study examined the specificity of ALA-induced porphyrin fluorescence in chemically induced murine lung tumors in vivo. During the early stages of tumorigenesis, ALA-induced PpIX fluorescence developed in hyperplastic tissues in the lung and later in early lung tumor foci. In early tumor foci, maximum PpIX fluorescence occurred 2 h after the administration of ALA and returned to background levels after 4 h. There was approximately a 20-fold difference in PpIX fluorescence intensity between tumor foci and the adjacent normal tissue. The specificity of ALA-induced fluorescence for hyperplastic tissues and benign tumors in lung during tumorigenesis suggests a possible use for this fluorochrome in the detection of premalignant alterations in the lung by fluorescence endoscopy. Two non-small cell lung cancer cell lines developed ALA-induced PpIX fluorescence in vitro. These lines exhibited a light-dose-dependent phototoxic response to ALA photodynamic therapy (PDT) in vitro. Because PpIX is a clinically effective photosensitizer for a wide variety of malignancies, these results support the possible use of ALA-induced PpIX PDT for lung cancer.