Rational Cancer Treatment Combinations: An Urgent Clinical Need

Technological innovations have not only contributed to a growing cancer understanding but also uncovered numerous new therapeutic targets. Some 5,000 clinical trials are probing the clinical benefit of urgently needed new combination treatments. However, the possibilities to combine individual treatments dramatically outnumber the patients available to enroll in clinical trials. This comes at a potential cost of missed opportunities, clinical failure, avoidable toxicity, insufficient patient accrual, and financial loss. In this Perspective, we discuss both the advances we have made and the challenges for rational combination therapies that we are currently facing.