Cancer drug discovery through collaboration.

It has been two decades since cancer was first described as a genetic disease and researchers offered the promise of early diagnosis and targeted therapies. Today, most cancer patients still await life-saving treatments. Genomics and other '-omics' technologies have revealed a complexity among cancers that makes almost any tumour genetically unique; as a consequence, effective targeted therapies might be suitable only for small subgroups of patients. We suggest that by merging and organizing their core competencies, academia, biotechnology companies and the pharmaceutical industry can address existing bottlenecks in anticancer drug discovery and development.