I spent about a week mulling over this paper in the back of my head, and I became fixated on coming up with a good metaphor to describe it. But, it is really complicated and I came to the conclusion that I would just end up having to explain the metaphor, which kind of defeats the purpose. Instead I took the approach of trying to explain it as well as I could by including prior work that puts this paper into perspective, and by walking through a fictional narrative that illustrates the early stages of the struggle of moving from hit to drug. In fact, the subject of this paper doesn't even come up until the last frame. But I hope it gives you a foothold to understand how a massive collection of data can help explain the mechanism of action of cancer drugs, and if you want to know more, check out the paper and the Broad Institute's Cancer Therapeutics Response Portal, where this treasure trove of data lives.

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