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Ojima. Cancer Drug Resist 2021;4:885-7 Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/cdr.2021.86
Drug Resistance

Editorial Open Access

Recent advances in tumor-targeting chemotherapy
drugs

Iwao Ojima

Institute of Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3400, USA.
Correspondence to: Prof./Dr. Iwao Ojima, Institute of Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery, Stony Brook University, Stony
Brook, NY 11794-3400, USA. E-mail: iwao.ojima@stonybrook.edu

How to cite this article: Ojima I. Recent advances in tumor-targeting chemotherapy drugs. Cancer Drug Resist 2021;4:885-7.
https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/cdr.2021.86

Received: 30 Aug 2021 Accepted: 7 Sep 2021 First online: 8 Sep 2021

Academic Editor: Godefridus J. Peters Copy Editor: Yue-Yue Zhang Production Editor: Yue-Yue Zhang

The first antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), Mylotarg, received FDA approval in 2000, and the revolutionary
targeted cancer chemotherapy drug, Imatinib (Gleevec), was approved by FDA in 2001. Accordingly, it is an
excellent time to review the recent advances in tumor-targeting chemotherapy drugs by collecting articles
from leading researchers at the 20th anniversary of the FDA approvals of these two epoch-making
anticancer drugs with two different approaches to targeting cancer cells specifically. In this Special Issue,
recent advances in these two approaches are presented.

Lyons et al. reviewed recent advances in preclinical research that have significantly increased the
[1]
experimental rigor through which promising candidate molecules are accurately evaluated in parallel to the
development of ADC technology. For example, preclinical tumor modeling with the development of
patient-derived tumor organoid models that recapitulate many aspects of the human disease far better than
conventional subcutaneous xenograft models. The authors also discussed how the application of several
preclinical molecular imaging techniques has greatly enhanced the quality of experimental data, enabling
quantitative pre- and post-treatment tumor measurements or the precise assessment of ADCs as effective
diagnostics.

© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
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