Volume 13 Issue 7, July 2016

A patient's right to obtain medication that will be ineffective against his/her terminal illness and will cause his/her death should also encompass the right of that patient to be prescribed medication that might be ineffective and might cause his/her death. Indeed, the 'right to die' should embody the 'right to try' experimental agents for the treatment of cancer.

Analysis of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) in blood samples provides a surrogate form of tumour biopsy (liquid biopsy) for determining EGFR and KRAS mutation status in patients with advanced-stage non-small-cell lung cancer. This approach obviates the need for a repeat biopsy, especially for the EGFR T790M mutation, which confers resistance to EGFR inhibition.

Advances in our understanding of thyroid cancer biology have led to the regulatory approval of a number of molecularly targeted therapies for advanced-stage disease. Herein, the authors summarize the progress made to date in molecular medicine for the different histotypes of thyroid cancer, and highlight the questions for future research focused on treatment of the various disease subtypes.

Aberrant cellular proliferation is a hallmark of cancer, and the activation of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) is a key feature of this proliferation. In this Review, the authors describe the biological rationale for targeted inhibition of CDK4/6, review the available clinical evidence for the agents that are in clinical development, and discuss the challenges with regard to optimizing their use.

Growing evidence indicates that anticancer agents can mobilize the immune system against the tumour. By reinstating immunosurveillance, the activity of conventional and targeted therapies might be prolonged beyond cessation of the treatment. The authors of this Review, explore how imatinib likely operates through immune and cell-autonomous mechanisms, which has practical implications for defining biomarkers that predict response or resistance to imatinib, as well as for the design of novel combination treatments.

The general effectiveness of radiotherapy has improved over time, owing to improvements in technology which have enabled, among others, image-guided and intensity-modulated approaches to be used. In this Perspectives article, the authors describe how these advances can be best implemented for treatment of squamous-cell carcinoma of the anus.