Network medicine strikes a blow against breast cancer.

Drug development for complex diseases is shifting from targeting individual proteins or genes to systems-based attacks targeting dynamic network states. Lee et al. now reveal how the progressive rewiring of a signaling network over time following EGF receptor inhibition leaves triple-negative breast tumors vulnerable to a second, later hit with DNA-damaging drugs, demonstrating that time- and order-dependent drug combinations can be more efficacious in killing cancer cells.