Two and a half years ago, several months before she died, Abigail Burroughs, a 21-year old senior at the University of Virginia, sat with her father as chemotherapy dripped, once again, into her body. Together, they mapped out a plan they hoped would save Abigail’s life, and the lives of other desperately-ill people.Burroughs, who was diagnosed with head and neck cancer at 19, had taken every medication her doctors could think of, to no avail. Her last chance, she believed, might be two experimental drugs, Erbitux (still not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration) and Iressa, approved in May.

Dean Gordanier is a tax lawyer, fitness buff, father of three and, at age 54, a veteran of the roller-coaster ride of hope and despair that is becoming a way of life for growing numbers of people with cancer, thanks to the promise, and the heartbreak, of a new generation of cancer drugs.Many of these drugs, which oncologists call “targeted therapies,” are breathtaking scientifically. With names like Gleevec, Avastin, Iressa, Rituxan, Herceptin, even the still-nameless drug known as SU11248, these drugs are the closest scientists have come yet to the holy grail of cancer treatment – knocking out cancer cells with great specificity without wreaking too much havoc on the rest of the body.

There’s a revolution brewing in the diagnosis of cancer that could dramatically change how doctors figure out which tumors are truly life-threatening – and need chemotherapy — and which are not.

Molecular biologists aren’t a particularly grumpy lot, but they are grumbling these days that corporate interests – particularly those of the California-based Geron Corp. – may be stifling development of a promising new class of anti-cancer drugs called telomerase inhibitors.

Sadly enough, it often seems to take a celebrity patient to get the rest of us to sit up and take notice of certain diseases, especially diseases  in which the patient’s own behavior contributes to the risk.

“We Cater to Cowards,” proclaims the cheery little sign at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, where countless cowards (including this one) go for what may well be everyone’s least favorite test: colon cancer screening.It’s no secret why people stay away in droves from such things. To detect cancer, or the small growths called polyps that might someday turn cancerous, a doctor must pass a tube containing a tiny video camera up through the patient’s rectum into the large intestine, or colon – not exactly most people’s idea of a good time.

Several years ago, Dr. Michael J. Glantz, a brain cancer specialist, was struck by what appeared to be an extraordinary number of divorces and separations among his patients, many of whom had primary brain tumors that were expected to kill them in 15 months.Not only did there seem to be lots of breakups, but most of them seemed to occur when the women got sick. So, Glantz, who was then at Brown University and is moving this summer to the University of Arizona, began keeping track.