Sean Khozin: Scientific progress thrives on challenging the assumptions we once held as absolute
Sean Khozin, Chief Executive Officer at CEO Roundtable on Cancer, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“For decades, the idea of “undruggable” cancer targets shaped the way we approached drug discovery. In medical school, we were taught that certain proteins, those lacking clear binding pockets or embedded in complex cellular networks, were simply beyond our reach.
Drug development at the time focused on well defined enzymes, while elusive targets like KRAS, MYC, and beta-catenin remained untouched. The belief that these key oncogenic drivers were fundamentally unapproachable dictated research priorities, investment strategies, and even how future scientists were trained to think.
Yet the universe is indifferent to such human characterizations: what we label as impossible is often a reflection of our own limitations in understanding, not an inherent property of nature.
But things are changing. Advances in molecular biology, structural chemistry, and AI-driven drug discovery are rewriting the rules, allowing us to engage these once inaccessible targets in new ways. Rather than forcing conventional inhibitors onto unconventional proteins, we’re now eliminating them entirely, altering their interactions, or exploiting hidden vulnerabilities. Targeted protein degradation, synthetic lethality, RNA therapeutics, and AI-powered strategies are dismantling longstanding barriers, redefining what is possible in drug development.
This is yet another reminder that scientific progress thrives on challenging the assumptions we once held as absolute. What my peers and I were taught to be out of reach (deemed undruggable by the limits of our knowledge at the time) is now being systematically overcome. Biology has not changed but our ability to interrogate and manipulate it has evolved in ways previously unimaginable. With each novel finding, no matter how small, we push the boundaries of what’s possible.
The frontiers of drug discovery are not fixed: they’re meant to be challenged, expanded, and ultimately erased — one experiment at a time.”
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