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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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