Roadmap

Acquired therapeutic resistance is a key contributor to cancer treatment failure, requiring new approaches to address its complex mechanisms. In this Roadmap, Soragni, Knudsen and colleagues discuss the mechanisms of acquired resistance and the models to better study it. Finally, they promote integration of biomarker-driven strategies and cutting-edge technologies to advance predictive and proactive prevention in cancer therapy.

Although splicing factors are altered in cancer through mutations and copy number variations, their exact role remains challenging to define. In this Roadmap, Anczukow, Thomas-Tikhonenko and colleagues explore recent advances in splicing biology and provide guidance on leveraging these insights to facilitate the clinical application of compounds that target or exploit aberrant splicing patterns in cancer.

Resistance to therapy remains the biggest challenge to achieving cures in patients with cancer. In this Roadmap, Russo et al. overview the field of cancer drug-tolerant persister cells providing paths to advance our understanding of their biology with innovative technologies and recommend strategies to therapeutically target them to ensure that more prolonged responses are achieved in patients with cancer.

In this Roadmap, Boire et al. consider the immediate causes of mortality in patients with cancer, a topic not often considered in either preclinical or clinical research, and provide recommendations for how we can stimulate research to advance our mechanistic understanding of these causes with a long-term view to improving the quality of life for patients with late-stage cancer.