ANDRZEJ KRAUZEFor the past four years, the April issue of The Scientist has focused on cutting-edge cancer research. A look at the four covers gives a taste of each year’s hottest topics. In 2011, molecularly guided melanoma therapies claimed the cover; in 2012, that spot went to cancer stem cells; 2013 featured zebrafish embryos as a new model for the study of cancer dynamics and drug screening; and last year’s April cover was devoted to cancer immunotherapy.
This year’s cover story on mouse avatars, and much of the issue’s other content, focuses on the remarkable progress made in designing cancer therapies that embody the ideals of precision, or personalized, medicine—increasingly patient- and tumor-specific, and often less toxic to normal cells. Both next-generation sequencing data and advances in basic science continue to rewrite the narrative of cancer research. There is now palpable excitement about how new insights into cancer biology will soon drive ever more precise tumor targeting, even though treating each patient’s disease as unique still faces many hurdles, which Adam Marcus outlines in a Critic at Large essay.
How personalized can such targeting get when cancer is such a mess of things gone awry? In “My Mighty Mouse,” Megan Scudellari reports ...
