We end this year contemplating what history can teach us, with a particular focus on transcription factors and anticancer drug development. This issue comes with a Poster that highlights some of the key discoveries from the past 30 years of p53 research and how these are now being translated to the clinic. This Poster, authored by Bert Vogelstein and Carol Prives and produced by Nature Reviews Cancer and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, is freely available at http://www.nature.com/reviews/posters/p53 thanks to support from Roche Molecular Systems and Genentech.

Historically, transcription factors, such as p53 and MYC, have been considered formidable targets for drug development, but tremendous progress has been made in recent years. The Review by David Lane and colleagues on page 862, discusses the strategies by which the expression of p53 can be reinstated in tumour cells in which p53 is mutated or suppressed by its regulators. The ability to target this transcription factor has required some new approaches to drug development. Similar sentiments are discussed in the Review by Tracy Brooks and Laurence Hurley on page 849. They discuss how the discovery of specific structures — G-quadruplexes and i-motifs — that can form in the DNA of the transcription regulatory elements upstream of MYC, has identified a new avenue for targeting MYC overexpression and hyperactivity in tumours.

Finally, we would like to thank all our authors this year for taking time out of their busy schedules to write for us, all of our referees who have helped us to ensure that we continue to publish Reviews and Perspectives of the highest quality and our Research Highlights advisors for continuing to notify us of good quality and important recently published papers. We couldn't have done it without you!