Overview

For patients with cancers that are not cured by surgery or radiation, chemotherapy often represents the best hope for treatment. While chemotherapy is highly effective for some cancers, it is less effective for others.

Researchers in the Developmental Therapeutics Program are developing new, more effective cancer treatments. In many cases, these treatments also have fewer side effects than standard therapies.

Investigators in this program focus on research in four areas. First, they are actively elucidating the signals that contribute to cancer cell survival and proliferation. As these pathways are illuminated, the possibility that they could serve as targets for new, more selective anticancer drugs is examined.

Second, members of this program are performing laboratory studies of new agents targeting specific cancer cell abnormalities such as the survival signals as mentioned above. At the same time, other program members are examining mechanisms that make cancer cells resistant to some of the currently available treatments and assessing the ability of some of the newer agents circumvent this resistance.

Third, investigators in this program perform innovative clinical trials of new anticancer drugs. These trials are designed to assess the effectiveness of the new agents and to determine the impact of treatment on the biochemical pathways that are targeted in the cancer cells.

Finally, program members are studying how a patient’s genetic makeup affects the response to and side effects of chemotherapy. Based on these studies, efforts are under way to create individualized treatment options.