More than one in three people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life. In this issue, we feature several articles on approaches to combating cancer, from conceptual strategies facilitating drug discovery to novel potential targets for anticancer drugs and therapeutic vaccination. 'Fresh From The Pipeline' highlights clofarabine, the first new drug for paediatric leukaemia to be approved in more than a decade. Lengauer and colleagues propose that bottlenecks in anticancer drug discovery could be more efficiently addressed if academia, biotech and pharma companies combine their core competencies. Focussing on strategies to harness the immune system for the battle against cancer, Andersen and colleagues review anti-apoptotic molecules as targets for therapeutic vaccination. The role of the enzyme PARP1 in DNA repair could make it a promising target for agents that enhance the cytotoxicity of certain anticancer drugs, as Pragtap and Szabo discuss in their review, which also describes the potential of PARP inhibitors for treating several neurological and inflammatory conditions. Targeting a different class of enzymes, Mueller and colleagues summarize the potential therapeutic applications of inhibitors of Rho kinases in various neurological disorders. In this month's Analyst's Couch, Gershell takes a look at the market for existing therapies for type 2 diabetes and those in development. A major challenge for drug development is the prediction of toxicity, and Liebler and Guengerich review mechanisms of drug-induced toxicity and new technologies that can be used to study this in the context of systems biology. Finally, a Timeline article by Rosen and Aribat examines how the field of drug delivery evolved, and describes approaches for future discovery and development.