In the early 1940s, Louis Goodman, Alfred Gilman and colleagues noted that soldiers dying after exposure to sulphur mustard gas in the First World War trenches had lymphoid hypoplasia and myelosuppression. They used this knowledge to treat a patient dying of advanced Hodgkin's lymphoma with nitrogen mustard. The rest, as they say, is history, but despite the multi-billion dollar industry now focused on identifying better anti-cancer agents, many of the same challenges apparent then still exist today. Bruce Chabner and Thomas Roberts on page 65 review the history of chemotherapy and the war on cancer.

A possible new target in the war on cancer is discussed on page 51 by Gregory Hannigan, Armelle Troussard and Shoukat Dedhar. They describe the role of integrin-linked kinase and how disruption of its function is implicated in many aspects of tumour progression. Similarly, Fu-Tong Liu and Gabriel Rabinovich on page 29 outline the function of a novel family of animal lectins — the galectins — and highlight family members that might prove to be useful therapeutic targets.

Another long-term goal of chemotherapy is to control tumour metastases. On page 21, Christopher Logothetis and Sue-Hwa Lin describe the biology of prostate metastases that arise in bone. Unusually, prostate cancer lesions are bone forming, rather than bone lysing, prompting the authors to ask if this knowledge will help identify novel antimetastatic therapies for this cancer.

And while scientists and clinicians are busy discovering potential novel therapies, another important group are helping them to deliver these therapies to cancer patients by the most efficient route. On page 73, Deborah Collyar describes the work of cancer patient advocates in the United States and how their personal insight into living with cancer can be used to benefit cancer research.