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Resistance to therapy remains the biggest challenge to achieving cures in patients with cancer. In this Roadmap, Russo et al. overview the field of cancer drug-tolerant persister cells providing paths to advance our understanding of their biology with innovative technologies and recommend strategies to therapeutically target them to ensure that more prolonged responses are achieved in patients with cancer.
In this Roadmap, Boire et al. consider the immediate causes of mortality in patients with cancer, a topic not often considered in either preclinical or clinical research, and provide recommendations for how we can stimulate research to advance our mechanistic understanding of these causes with a long-term view to improving the quality of life for patients with late-stage cancer.