Colorectal carcinoma (CRC) is an heterogeneous disease in which different genetic alterations play a role in its pathogenesis and progression and offer potential for therapeutic intervention. The research on predictive biomarkers in metastatic CRC (mCRC) mainly focused on the identification of biomarkers of response or resistance to anti-epidermal growth factor receptor monoclonal antibodies. In this respect, international guidelines suggest testing mCRC patients only for KRAS, NRAS and BRAF mutations and for microsatellite instability. However, the use of novel testing methods is raising relevant issue related to these biomarkers, such as the presence of sub-clonal RAS mutations or the clinical interpretation of rare no-V600 BRAF variants. In addition, a number of novel biomarkers is emerging from recent studies including amplification of ERBB2, mutations in ERBB2, MAP2K1 and NF1 and rearrangements of ALK, ROS1, NTRK and RET. Mutations in POLE and the levels of tumor mutation burden also appear as possible biomarkers of response to immunotherapy in CRC. Finally, the consensus molecular subtypes classification of CRC based on gene expression profiling has prognostic and predictive implications. Integration of all these information will be likely necessary in the next future in order to improve precision/personalized medicine in mCRC patients.

The Fanconi anaemia (FA) pathway is an important mechanism for cellular DNA damage repair, which functions to remove toxic DNA interstrand crosslinks. This is particularly relevant in the context of ovarian and other cancers which rely extensively on interstrand cross-link generating platinum chemotherapy as standard of care treatment. These cancers often respond well to initial treatment, but reoccur with resistant disease and upregulation of DNA damage repair pathways. The FA pathway is therefore of great interest as a target for therapies that aim to improve the efficacy of platinum chemotherapies, and reverse tumour resistance to these. In this review, we discuss recent advances in understanding the mechanism of interstrand cross-link repair by the FA pathway, and the potential of the component parts as targets for therapeutic agents. We then focus on the current state of play of inhibitor development, covering both the characterisation of broad spectrum inhibitors and high throughput screening approaches to identify novel small molecule inhibitors. We also consider synthetic lethality between the FA pathway and other DNA damage repair pathways as a therapeutic approach.

Cancer development is frequently associated with dysregulation of mRNA translation to enhance both increased global protein synthesis and translation of specific mRNAs encoding oncoproteins. Thus, targeted inhibition of mRNA translation is viewed as a promising new approach for cancer therapy. In this article we review current progress in investigating dysregulation of mRNA translation initiation in mature B-cell neoplasms, focusing on chronic lymphocytic leukemia, follicular lymphoma and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. We discuss mechanisms and regulation of mRNA translation, potential pathways by which genetic alterations and the tumor microenvironment alters mRNA translation in malignant B cells, preclinical evaluation of drugs targeted against specific eukaryotic initiation factors and current progress towards clinical development. Overall, inhibition of mRNA translation initiation factors is an exciting and promising area for development of novel targeted anti-tumor drugs.