Abstract
Cancer is or will be the major cause of death within the near future in many regions of our planet. This chapter explores some basic concepts of cancer and anti-cancer therapies. In particular, several intrinsic properties of the disease that represent obstacles for an improvement of therapy such as cancer cell identity, heterogeneity of the disease, heterogeneity of cancer cells, microenvironment and cancer stem cells will be discussed. In addition, therapeutic success has been hindered by the scarcity of experimental models that faithfully recapitulate human cancer. Nevertheless, scientists have accumulated a significant amount of knowledge about the molecular mechanisms of cancer and this understanding is currently being transformed into more precise medicines.
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Link, W. (2019). Introduction. In: Principles of Cancer Treatment and Anticancer Drug Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18722-4_1
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