Reframing cancer therapy through tumor plasticity.

Reversible cellular plasticity enables tumor cells to bypass targeted therapies, contributing to drug tolerance and resistance in cancer treatment.

• Why it matters: Understanding how tumor cells switch phenotypes through plasticity addresses a key barrier to effective therapy, as genetic mutations alone do not explain all resistance mechanisms.
• What they did: The authors review nongenetic plasticity mechanisms and their potential clinical applications, emphasizing the importance of targeting reversible, non-genetic vulnerabilities in cancer.
• The result: This perspective suggests that exploiting tumor plasticity could lead to new strategies to prevent or eliminate resistant cancer cell populations, improving therapeutic outcomes.