On or off target: mutations, models, and predictions.

In a series of articles published in February 2010, The New York Times chronicled, from a personal perspective, the rollercoaster experience of those associated with clinical trials of a RAF inhibitor for the treatment of melanoma. In this issue of Science Translational Medicine, Whittaker et al. describe research that reconciles some of the bewildering aspects of the discovery and development of drugs that inhibit such protein kinase targets in cancer.