**Abstract**

Survival and quality of life of cancer patients have improved in the last decades. However, some forms of cancer still escape current treatment options and continue to have an ominous prognosis. A plausible strategy to change this situation is to identify unexploited pathways in the cancer cell that open genuinely new therapeutic pathways. Ion channels are among such targets since they participate in all steps in the cancer process, from initiation through growth and metastasis to drug resistance. In some cases, ion channels can thus serve as therapeutic targets. Kv10.1 is particularly well suited for this purpose because the channel appears outside of the brain almost exclusively in cancer cells. Recent research showed that besides its functions as a canonical ion channel, Kv10.1 is required by dividing cells to complete division. For this, healthy cells express the channel only during a short period in the cell division cycle. Cancer cells, rather than increasing the channel's expression, maintain relatively constant levels throughout their lives, which confers a selective advantage and favors tumor progression. The mechanisms leading to abnormal expression and its consequences, and how we can take advantage of this knowledge to improve current cancer treatments will be discussed.

**Keywords:** Kv10.1, ion channels, cell cycle, cancer target
