Unexpected combinations

Two studies are prompting a rethink of how combination therapies target cancer at both the level of individual cells, and across a patient population. The papers are pushing drug developers to parse data from preclinical and clinical combo studies with a new perspective, and could lead to new strategies for pairing compounds.

The rise of next-generation sequencing and other technologies has provided a wealth of molecular information about variability in cancer. But analyses of those data have not yet translated into a step change in drug development strategy, according to Daniel Peeper, an author on one of the studies and head of the Division of Molecular Oncology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute...