The Jeremiah Metzger Lecture: intelligent design of cancer therapy: trials and tribulations.

A new era of cancer therapy is now upon us, heralded by fundamental discoveries of disease-causing genetic mutations affecting the activity of protein kinases or other key proteins that can be blocked with reasonable specificity with small molecules. Important therapeutic advances are extending the lives of patients with cancers that were previously refractory to therapy. There are opportunities for significant breakthroughs in many cancer types, including thyroid cancers, which although comparatively rare represent a particularly compelling paradigm of disease that may be well suited for treatment with specific kinase inhibitors.