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Fenton et al. Cancer Drug Resist 2018;1:200-3                                     Cancer
               DOI: 10.20517/cdr.2018.19                                             Drug Resistance




               Editorial                                                                     Open Access


               What really matters - response and resistance in
               cancer therapy


               Tim R. Fenton, Michelle D. Garrett, Mark N. Wass, Martin Michaelis
               School of Biosciences, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NJ, UK.

               Correspondence to: Dr. Tim R. Fenton, Dr. Michelle D. Garrett, Dr. Mark N. Wass, and Dr. Martin Michaelis, School of
               Biosciences, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NJ, UK. E-mails: t.fenton@kent.ac.uk; m.d.garrett@kent.ac.uk;
               m.n.wass@kent.ac.uk; m.michaelis@kent.ac.uk
               How to cite this article: Fenton TR, Garrett MD, Wass MN, Michaelis M. What really matters - response and resistance in
               cancer therapy.Cancer Drug Resist 2018;1:200-3. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/cdr.2018.19
               Received: 12 Oct 2018    First Decision: 18 Oct 2018    Revised: 30 Oct 2018    Accepted: 30 Oct 2018    Published: 19 Dec 2018

               Science Editor: Godefridus J. Peters    Copy Editor: Huan-Liang Wu    Production Editor: Zhong-Yu Guo



               From 10th to 12th September of 2018, we held the first British Association of Cancer Research (BACR)
               Special Conference on “Response and Resistance in Cancer Therapy” at the University of Kent, Canterbury,
               UK. The conference theme is the subject of this Special Issue of Cancer Drug Resistance and we hope this
               editorial and the following contributions, will give you an insight into this important topic.

               As we all know, cancer is a major global killer. According to Globocan (http://globocan.iarc.fr/Pages/
               fact_sheets_cancer.aspx), there “were 14.1 million new cancer cases, 8.2 million cancer deaths and 32.6
               million people living with cancer (within 5 years of diagnosis) in 2012 worldwide”. Early diagnosis and
               local therapy including surgery and local radiotherapy with or without adjuvant chemotherapy have largely
               accounted for the progress made in curing cancer. Apart from a few exceptions (e.g., testicular cancer,
               Hodgkin’s lymphoma, childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia) cure rates remain low for cancers that
               cannot be effectively treated by localised therapy. This is typically metastatic disease, which depends on
                                                                                               [1-7]
               systemic treatment. In such cases, the focus is largely placed on improving and prolonging life .
               It has often been argued that, because the outcome is particularly poor in metastatic disease, pathways
               driving metastasis constitute prime therapeutic targets [8-10] . Although it is undoubtedly true that the
               presence of metastases is the number one determinant of poor outcomes in most types of cancer, the
               efficacy of therapeutic targets in this area is much less clear. The vast majority of cancers with poor
               prognosis already present with unresectable, typically metastatic disease at diagnosis, even if the metastases
               cannot be detected at that point [1,2,4,5] . In this scenario, inhibition of further metastasis formation may
               prolong life but its curative potential is limited.


                           © The Author(s) 2018. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
                           International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
                sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long
                as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,
                and indicate if changes were made.


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