Testicular cancer: Determinants of cisplatin sensitivity and novel therapeutic opportunities.

•Testicular cancers are characterized by insufficient DNA repair and a hypersensitive apoptotic response, resulting in a high sensitivity to cisplatin-based chemotherapy.•Treatment of testicular cancer patients who are refractory to cisplatin-based chemotherapy remains to be improved.•No molecularly targeted treatment options are currently available.•Several strategies to overcome cisplatin resistance have shown pre-clinical efficacy, including therapies combining cisplatin with PARP inhibitors, MDM2 inhibitors or inhibitors of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway.•Results of clinical trials investigating targeted drugs as single agent have been disappointing.•Clinical evaluation of combination treatments of cisplatin with targeted drugs is warranted.