This review summarises the current knowledge of anticancer therapy. More than 1,100 cancer drugs are currently under development in the United States. The increasing biological insight and platforms for high throughput screening of drugs have changed the developmental landscape of anticancer therapies from classical cytotoxic agents to targeted agents and immunotherapy. There is an increasing number of targeted agents, which are only efficacious in tumours harbouring specific genomic alterations in early clinical development. Furthermore, the landscape of immunotherapy broadens, and personalised immunotherapy is in development. The integration of genomic testing into early clinical oncology trials is increasing.