'Anti-evolution' drugs could be the key to finally curing cancer.

Cancer researchers are coming together to create a new generation of so-called ‘anti-evolution’ therapies, which they say will combat the disease’s “lethal ability to adapt and evade treatment”. Experts from The Institute of Cancer Research in London teamed up with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and have launched a roadmap for overcoming what they call ‘the cancer evolution’.The plan sets out how big data analysis can identify cancer’s capacity to sidestep treatment by evolving drug resistance, and uncover game-changing new treatments. Cancers evolve and adapt much as animals and plants do in response to changes in the environment, or bacteria do when they become resistant to antibiotics. Patients may initially respond to cancer treatment, but they often then relapse as their disease evolves and becomes resistant. The scientists will therefore use big data to predict how cancers will evolve and their escape routes from treatment, which they say will allow them to design state-of-the-art clinical trials, assessing the best ways of combining new anti-evolution therapies. See