About Us

Scientific background

Personalized medicine, which aims to ensure that the right patient receives the right dosage of the right drug at the right time, is rapidly transforming therapeutic approaches to cancer driven by continued advances in our understanding of the etiology and characteristics of cancerous cells. Limitations of conventional chemotherapeutics can include their broad usage across cancer types resulting in wide variations in outcomes, and their adverse events on normal tissue which can limit dosage and therapeutic effects.

Improved understanding of the incredible diversity of cellular changes driving carcinogenesis has led to the emergence of targeted chemotherapeutics agents, with novel targets continually identified as our knowledge of cancer biology continues to grow. Unlike traditional chemotherapeutics, which attack or inhibit rapidly dividing cells indiscriminately, targeted chemotherapeutics are based on cancer-specific biology and targets, which can increase the killing of malignant tissue while minimizing harm to normal cells.

Many early targeted agents were associated with specific cancers (e.g., Herceptin for HER2+ breast cancers and Gleevec for BCR-ABL fusion-positive leukemia). However, increasingly we are seeing important cellular targets, e.g. in immuno-oncology, that are present in multiple cancer types. Recently, the immune checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda became the first therapeutic approved for any solid tumor with the associated biomarker, confirming the importance of developing novel approaches that are marker-driven, especially when a companion diagnostic allows selection of a targeted population that can best benefit from the agent.