One of the big challenges with oncology at the moment is the sheer proliferation of pathways, targets and opportunities as this slide about IGF-1R and related pathways from Dr Andrew Godwin at Fox Chase Cancer Center at the ASCO 2008 meeting shows:

Godwin_signal_pathways1

There are, of course, many other pathways and possible kinase targets.  Nobody really knows which ones will be useful or critical in which tumours, however, so the whole process of R&D becomes a crapshoot.

Which means that when business development and licensing departments meet with their clinical and marketing counterparts to discuss opportunities, this is inevitably the situation that arises:

Picture 2

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