Dr Herbie Newell discusses the development of cancer treatments and the role that partnerships between academia and the pharmaceutical industry have to play in this process.

Dr Newell explains how the appropriate use of biomarkers could decrease the time taken to bring a new treatment to market, outlines the drug targets that he expects to be important in future cancer treatment and considers the role that the MDM-p53 signalling pathway could play in the development of epigenetic drug targets.