Mechanism-based target identification and drug discovery in cancer research.

Cancer as a disease in the human population is becoming a larger health problem, and the medicines used as treatments have clear limitations. In the past 20 years, there has been a tremendous increase in our knowledge of the molecular mechanisms and pathophysiology of human cancer. Many of these mechanisms have been exploited as new targets for drug development in the hope that they will have greater antitumor activity with less toxicity to the patient than is seen with currently used medicines. The fruition of these efforts in the clinic is just now being realized with a few encouraging results.