Cover caption

Abstract

Although people bemoan the fact that the "War on Cancer" has not produced a "cure" for cancer, there is no doubt that great advances have been made in the last 38 years. These advances have given rise to targeted therapies and shed new insights into why therapies fail. We are now entering an era when we can target multiple pathways that are important for tumor survival. The cover images for this issue of Cancer Biology and Therapy illustrate two approaches to targeting multiple pathways. Kim and colleagues use antibodies to VEGF and integrin αvβ3 to treat ovarian cancer cell xenografts. The cover image shows TUNEL staining (green) of endothial cells (as indicated by the red CD31 staining) treated with a combination of paclitaxel, bevacizumab and etaracizumab. To learn more about the effects of this combination, see the article by Kim and colleagues as well as the commentary by Jazaeri and Slack-Davis.

The idea behind synthetically lethal therapies is to target two pathways that when targeted individually aren't lethal, but when targeted together, are lethal. Michiue and colleagues target EGFR signaling and the Akt pathways in glioblastomas using siRNA. The inset, taken from their manuscript, shows a section of mouse brain containing a glioblasoma xenograft. The section shows EGFR staining (brown) in control treated cells 48 hours after treatment. To see the tumors treated with EGFR siRNA and to learn more about their approach, see the article by Michiue and colleagues as well as the commentary by Dai and colleagues.