In 1971, the then US President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, making “the conquest of cancer a national crusade”. Over the past 30 years, patients with cancer throughout the developed world have undoubtedly benefited from this investment into cancer research. Screening techniques for several types of cancer have led to earlier detection and increased survival rates, yet for others the outlook is not so rosy. On page 820 of this issue, Andrew von Eschenbach outlines his view, as Director of the National Cancer Institute, on the future progress of cancer research and of the likelihood of finding a cancer 'cure' by 2015. Although this view reflects the current exponential growth in both our knowledge and technical abilities, the translation of this into a cure is somewhat daunting given the ever-increasing unanswered questions that go hand in hand with our advances.

One area in which cancer researchers have made great progress in recent years is in identifying the genetic factors that predispose people to certain cancers. Alan Ashworth and colleagues describe on page 814 how our current understanding of BRCA1 and BRCA2 functions in hereditary breast cancer could also be used to identify BRCA-like tumour phenotypes in sporadic tumours, marking such tumours as susceptible to specific anticancer treatments. And Albert de la Chapelle on page 769 examines the genetic inheritance options left to patients with colorectal cancer who do not have hereditary mutations in well-studied tumour-suppressor genes.

Many questions have arisen since the Epstein–Barr virus was shown to be involved in the aetiology of Burkitt's lymphoma some 40 years ago. On page 757, Lawrence Young and Alan Rickinson review our progress and outline possible future treatments to come in the next 40 years.