The Final Frontier? Inhibitor Cocktails to Stamp out Cancer The use of mutation-specific. inhibitor drugs to fight cancer has been growing in popularity around the world. In fact, over the last ten years. the prescription rate of inhibitors over cytotoxic chemotherapy has more than tripled according to the National Institute of Cancer. Indeed in 2004. the Journal of Oncology published a revealing table with cytotoxic chemotherapy as the sole treatment: the 5-year survival rate was on average, less than 2.2% for hundreds of thousands of patients across twenty-two cancer types: the most being 41%, the least, zero. The statistics, though challenged from every corner, were not surprising considering that cytotoxic chemotherapy is a direct derivative of mustard gas, a WW I and WW 2 chemical warfare agent. However, while inhibitors are increasingly and remarkably effective in reducing tumors and cancer cell counts in a short amount of time, and with a fraction of the toxicity compared to their chemotherapy counterparts, cancer resistance Co inhibitors remains an ongoing problem. Inhibitor drugs are molecules that bind uniquely to a cancer cells surface and block an aspect of that cells functionality. For example. PARP inhibitors, designed to stop breast cancer, bind to an enzyme pathway found distinctly on breast cancer cells with a BRAC genetic mutation. The PARP molecule's attachment prevents the cell from performing DNA repair, leading to its death. What has baffled doctors however, is that after remission from inhibitor therapy, a resurgence of cancer almost always occurs and often at a more aggressive rate. Over the last several years. doctors have tackled the problem by treating patients with a secondary inhibitor, only to find secondary resistance and with a patient. more debilitated by the continuous use of drugs and emergence of aggressive cells. "It's becoming clear to the medical establishment that a cocktail of inhibitor drugs need to be given s