Cancer drugs like Gleevec or Herceptin, which were approved for us in the 1990s, prompted hopes of transforming cancer care and perhaps render harsh treatments like chemotherapy obsolete. Known as precision or targeted therapies, these drugs are designed to block the action of specific mutated genes or proteins that drive malignant tumor growth, while sparing normal tissues that lack such mutations. Despite some notable successes, however, targeted therapies, have thus far fallen short of the grander hopes. Many drugs aimed at mutated cancer genes, known as oncogenes, don’t work as expected, or are initially effective, but falter as drug-resistant cancer cells rapidly emerge and the patients relapse. Nevertheless, a new report published in CELL says that targeted therapy may yet have a bright future.
