Read the latest issue of Promise & Progress featuring research advances in cancer drug discovery and development, promising new cancer drugs, patient stories and more.
From scientific meetings to our own dinner tables, conversations about better treatments for cancer are among the most frequently discussed health care topics. Everyone wants them—the doctors and scientists who treat and research cancer, those of us who worry we may one day hear the words “you have cancer,” and most certainly the hundreds of thousands who have already been diagnosed. Whether it’s old-school chemotherapy or a brand-new immunotherapy, when we say “new treatment,” the form this usually takes is a drug—either a new one made from the ground up or an existing one that scientists modify to attack cancer cells.
Cancer is challenging because it is very different from every other disease. It is part of our own cells, explains James Berger and Jun Liu, who lead the Kimmel Cancer Center’s Chemical and Structural Biology program “We have to make drugs that attack one part of us without attacking another part,” says Liu.
Despite the challenges, Liu and Berger believe the Kimmel Cancer Center’s depth of expertise predict unprecedented advances.