We are witnessing several revolutionary technological advances in cancer. These innovations have not only contributed to a growing understanding of the tumor and its microenvironment but also uncovered an increasing array of new therapeutic targets. For most advanced cancers, therapy resistance limits the benefit of single-agent therapies. Therefore, some 5,000 clinical trials are ongoing globally to probe the clinical benefit of new combination treatments. However, the possibilities to combine individual treatments dramatically outnumber the patients available to enroll in clinical trials. This comes at a potential cost of missed opportunities, clinical failure, avoidable toxicity, insufficient patient accrual, and financial loss. A solution may be to design combination therapies more rationally, which are informed by fundamental biological and mechanistic insight. We will discuss some successes and failures of current treatment combinations, as well as interesting emerging preclinical concepts that warrant clinical exploration.

我们目睹了癌症方面几项革命性的技术进步。这些创新不仅促进了对肿瘤及其微环境的日益了解，而且发现了越来越多的新治疗靶标。对于大多数晚期癌症，治疗耐药性限制了单药治疗的益处。因此，全球正在进行约5,000个临床试验，以探索新的联合疗法的临床益处。但是，结合个别治疗的可能性大大超过了可参加临床试验的患者人数。这以错过机会，临床失败，可避免的毒性，患者应计不足和经济损失的潜在成本为代价。解决方案可能是更合理地设计组合疗法，基本的生物学和力学洞察力为您提供了信息。我们将讨论当前治疗组合的一些成功与失败，以及值得临床探索的有趣的新兴临床前概念。