Molecular underpinnings of the targeted therapy for cancer

Cancer is a real challenge for modern medicine. Biologically, it is of a host origin and therefore its eradication appears not so easy as one could expect to do it. Cancer presents itself with many faces as if it would be Janus the deity. The basic knowledge on tumorigenesis at the level of evolutionary science is weak. Additionally, accumulating molecular data are still focused on experimental systems, but more important fact is to determine the molecular pathobiology that could have impact on improvement of control of malignant disease. Poland is among the countries with high cancer morbidity and mortality. Multidisciplinary approach to detect, control, and treat cancer diseases is the only way to get improved clinical results. Moreover, it is worth pointing out that individual considerations of every patient would offer clinical benefits. Biology of human tumors with the modem armament of molecular and chemical methods would be a help-hand to construct novel drugs. Making a list of crucial pathways worth blocking with their translation into clinical benefits appears to be a great step forward. Chemistry is a real partner to modem medicine due to a technical possibility to have impact on molecules (xenobiotics) that will finally become approved drugs. Combinatorial chemistry offers automated methods for pipeline organic synthesis a large number of chemicals that are further capable of undertaking investigation at a bed. Many chemicals have been used for more than ten years upon treating various cancer patients. New drugs have various origin , i.e., monoclonal antibodies (Herceptin, Erbitux, Avastin) or small molecules (Glivec, Tarceva, Sutent, Nexavar). We do hope that in the future many new drugs will be available for treatment of particular disease in relation to genetic characterization of individual patient's tumor. At the same time, we realize the great need for changes in the financial facets of modem individual treatment, and hoping not to hamper the development of new drugs due to the lack of financial solution how to make new and expensive drugs available to many patients.