Anticancer drug combinations : The next medical challenge

Since most cancers have multiple genetic alterations and molecular abnormalities, it is seldom very useful by using therapeutics of only one anticancer drug owing to refractory and drug resistance of cancer tissues. It has a long time consensus that anticancer drug cocktail instead single drugs might dramatically promote the control of cancer progresses and metastasis in most clinical cancer trials. Despite great popularity and as modern cliché for anticancer drug combination utilizations, the hidden rules behind anticancer drug cocktails is an emerging scientific problem and pivotal topic in new era of anticancer therapy studies. Most importantly, anticancer drug cocktails need to transform from empirical to science-guided enterprises. This review offers the scenarios of background knowledge of cancer therapy achievements for drug combinations until now, possible future landscape and direction for overcoming limitations, pitfalls and drawbacks of past cancer therapy and proposes more matured ones.