Synthetic Lethality — A New Direction in Cancer-Drug Development

In this issue of the Journal, Fong et al. report the results of a phase 1 trial of a new cancer therapy involving 60 patients (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00516373).1 Readers may be surprised by the editors' decision to publish a small early-stage trial, but this trial not only reports important results — it also points to a new direction in the development of anticancer drugs. Modern cancer-drug discovery focuses on finding new therapies with few side effects by leveraging advances in the understanding of cancer biology, but barriers to success are substantial. The story behind the report by Fong et al. . . .