Browse Articles

The concurrence of cancer and pregnancy can pose complex medical, psychosocial and ethical issues. In this Comment, Varella and Partridge present approaches to the treatment of cancer during pregnancy, with a focus on patient preferences, patient and fetal risks, and team-based management.

Kreuzaler et al. examine the spatial metabolic rewiring driven by oncogenic MYC and show that it leads to increased import of vitamin B5, which represents a metabolic vulnerability to tumour progression.

In this study, Bansaccal et al. analyse why, at some skin locations, oncogene-expressing cells rarely progress to cancer and found that a dense dermal collagen network prevents skin cancer formation.

In this Review, Mempel et al. use our understanding of the physiological response programmes of the immune system to the more commonplace challenges it encounters as a framework to interpret observations of chemokine function in tumours. When viewed in this way, the design of more effective therapeutic interventions leveraging the chemokine system to recalibrate response patterns to cancer might be possible.

In this Viewpoint article, we asked six scientists working in the field of cancer dormancy to provide their opinions on the current state of the field and the challenges associated with translating dormancy research into the clinic.

Numerous immunomodulatory antibodies for cancer treatment have been developed following the discovery of negative regulators of antitumour immunity such as programmed cell death protein 1 (PD1) and cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA4). The efficacy of these antibodies is determined not only by their ability to block or engage their target but also by their interactions with Fcγ receptors (FcγRs). This Review outlines our current knowledge of these interactions and discusses how we can use this knowledge to generate more effective cancer immunotherapies in the future.

In this Comment, Berna Özdemir summarizes the evidence for greater drug toxicity in female patients and emphasizes the need for increased awareness of sex differences at all stages of drug development to establish sex-specific anticancer treatment strategies.

Targeting platelets represents a promising approach to improve the therapeutic efficacy of chemotherapy and cancer immunotherapy. Here, Li and colleagues highlight the dynamic role of platelets in tumour development, progression, and response to therapy, and underscore the utility of tumour-educated platelets for precise tumour diagnosis and treatment.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Xiwen Tang describes the development of in vivo reporters detecting mutant p53 at the protein level, which enables the visualization of precancerous cells during cancer initiation.

Enzymes that produce metabolites specifically required by cancer cells have become attractive targets for therapy. Recently, Doshi et al. highlighted the potential of targeting the detoxifying enzyme UXS1 in cancer.

This Review by Elena B. Pasquale outlines the current understanding of Eph receptor–ephrin signalling mechanisms in cancer progression and therapy resistance, and also details therapeutic strategies for targeting the Eph system as a novel cancer therapy and for improving the efficacy of conventional cancer therapies.

Although childhood cancer survival rates have increased globally, there is a markedly inequitable distribution of these advances. Here, Monica Gramatges summarizes these challenges and provides the reader with strategies and solutions that begin to address factors that contribute to these inequities.

In this Journal Club, Hajj discusses a study demonstrating that oncogene activation modulates immune control through both transcription and translation.

Maas et al. identify an inflammatory, immunosuppressive phenotype in neutrophils that accumulates in brain malignancies, and show that this tumour-promoting neutrophil activation is driven by the brain tumour microenvironment.

Wang et al. show that antibiotic targeting of anaerobic intratumoral bacteria exposes a unique repertoire of microbial neoantigens that can successfully trigger cellular immunity against colorectal cancer in mice.

Deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs) function in opposition to E3 ubiquitin ligases by removing ubiquitin from substrates to control protein and organelle homeostasis and responses to cellular stimuli. In this Review, Dewson et al. describe the many associations of DUBs with the hallmarks of cancer, with a view to identifying those DUBs most likely to impact cancer-associated phenotypes if targeted with selective inhibition.

Although tumour metabolism is well recognized as a key feature in cancer initiation and progression, little is known about metabolic reprogramming in patients. In this Review, Bartman et al. discuss stable-isotope tracing as a means to probe tumour metabolism in vivo and provide an overview of isotope labelling studies performed in patients with cancer.

In this Review, Swietach and colleagues discuss how the pH balance is dysregulated in tumours and how alterations in intracellular and extracellular pH affect tumour biology to accelerate disease progression, providing a rationale for therapeutic targeting of acid–base disturbances in cancer.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Hongcheng Mai describes the development of wildDISCO, an approach for whole-body immunolabelling, optical clearing and imaging in mice.

 People from minority racial and ethnic groups continue to experience disproportionate cancer incidences and cancer-associated mortality rates. In this Comment, Byrd and Wolf explore the contribution of non-medical factors to the composition of the gut microbiome, and how this may be an actionable target for reducing these disparities.