Cancer is a leading cause of death and a major health problem worldwide, particularly in more developed countries. There is, therefore, an urgent clinical need to develop more effective therapies to treat cancer and metastatic disease. In this Editorial, the content of The FEBS Journal's Special Issue on Cancer Therapeutics is outlined. The interesting collection of recent articles in this issue covers a wide repertoire of cancer therapeutic approaches. While some of the articles discuss broad-spectrum applications such as immunotherapy and oncolytic virus therapy, others focus on a particular type of cancer or a signalling pathway that has gone awry such as aberrant Ca2+ signalling, glycosylation or pre-mRNA processing. Finally, an article featured in this issue reviews our current understanding of how cancer cells can become dormant, often for decades, and which pathways reactivate these cells to cause relapse. I am sure there is something for everyone in this issue.
Keywords: cancer therapeutics; chemotherapy; immunotherapy; precision medicine.
© 2021 Federation of European Biochemical Societies.