April is Oesophageal Cancer Awareness Month and in this Collection we highlight a selection of recent Reviews and research Articles published in BJC focusing on research into oesophageal cancer, covering the epidemiology of oesophageal cancer risk, improvements in diagnostic and prognostic markers of this cancer, experimental therapeutics and outcomes from clinical trials.

March is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month and in this Collection we highlight a selection of recent Reviews and research Articles published in BJC focusing on research into ovarian cancer, covering the epidemiology of ovarian cancer risk, insights into the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying this cancer, experimental therapeutics and outcomes from clinical trials.

On World Cancer Day, we present some of our top cited content from the last couple of years. This selection reflects developing and ongoing trends across the cancer research community, including the immune system and immunotherapy, cancer metabolism, and metastasis among others. We hope you enjoy reading our Editor’s highlights, as we look forward to another year of exciting developments.

The last few years has seen growing interest in the function of epigenetics in cancer initiation and progression. A growing volume of work now underpins our understanding of the role of these non-genetic modifications in the molecular biology of disease initiation and metastatic spread, and how modulating the cell’s epigenetics may be used as a therapeutic strategy. This collection of articles picked by the Editors from Leukemia, Oncogene, the British Journal of Cancer and Blood Cancer Journal, provides you with a snapshot of current epigenetic research in both haematological and solid cancers.

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month and in this Collection we highlight a selection of recent Reviews and research Articles published in BJC focusing on research into pancreatic cancer, including pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, which covers insights into the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying pancreatic cancer, experimental therapeutics and outcomes from clinical trials.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and in this Collection we highlight a selection of recent papers published in BJC focusing on research into children’s and young people’s cancers covering the epidemiology of cancer occurrence, insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying a variety of cancers affecting children and clinical trials highlighting potential treatments.

Programmed cell death 1 receptor (PD-1) and its ligand programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) are immune checkpoint proteins found on the cell surface of T cells. Under physiological conditions their interaction results in T cell immune suppression, but cancer cells can hijack this pathway to escape immune detection. However, this can be reversed by blocking PD-1’s interaction with PD-L1. This has resulted in an intense research effort to investigate the underlying mechanisms and the clinical utility of inhibitors targeting these checkpoint proteins as therapeutic anticancer drugs. In this Collection we highlight a selection of recent papers focused on the cellular, molecular, diagnostic and clinical effects of these crucial proteins and their inhibitors.

As an international journal, the British Journal of Cancer publishes articles on a wide range of cancer research from across the world. In this the first Regional Collection, we highlight a selection of recently published studies originating from authors residing in Asia, covering a wide range of subjects from clinical trials through to cell-based studies and from a variety of countries including China, Japan and South Korea and Taiwan among others.

On World Cancer Day , we present some of our top cited content from the last year. This selection reflects developing and ongoing trends in the cancer research community, including liquid biopsies, cancer metabolism, and our growing understanding of the immune system and immunotherapy. We hope you enjoy reading our Editor’s highlights, as we look forward to another year of exciting developments.

Metabolic perturbations are a hallmark of cancer. Unique bioenergetic and biosynthetic alterations enable growth and metastasis in a nutrient-poor environment and understanding these modified pathways has been a key focus of research so far. We are now at a position where we need to develop these findings into preclinical and clinical outcomes, and this Special Issue on Cancer Metabolism highlights the ongoing challenges in the field. Curated by Professor Adrian Harris (University of Oxford) and Dr Christian Frezza (University of Cambridge), the Special Issue contains a selection of articles and commissioned content that provide insights into a variety of ongoing questions in oncometabolism, to help drive the translation of these findings towards the clinic.

This new collection of breast cancer papers shows the wide range of clinical studies and translational research published in the British Journal of Cancer. Curated by our Editor-in-Chief, Adrian Harris (University of Oxford), the studies range from the difficult decisions of treating breast cancer, how people respond to a false positive test and to recent advances in BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing. Work on the role of oestrogen receptor status and BRCA2 and new work on triple receptor negative breast cancer, the androgen receptor and long-term outcome is presented. New genotypes and predictors of response to immunotherapy, as well as early phase studies on HDAC inhibitors are described. Although, not a novel agent, the important role of biosimilars is shown, and finally research on myc and metabolism in breast cancer.