Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Reducing the number of macrophages in primary breast cancers in mice increases sensitivity to paclitaxel through a mechanism involving CD8+ T cells, and patients with breast cancer who have a higher ratio of CD68 (a macrophage marker) mRNA levels to CD8mRNA levels have a reduced rate of pathological complete response.
Desmosomes are adhesion complexes that are related to adherens junctions, and recent studies using mouse genetic approaches have uncovered a role for desmosomes in tumour suppression.
Otto Warburg has contributed important data and hypotheses to the fields of cancer research and metabolism, but what did he actually find and what conclusions did he draw? This Review looks at the life and research of Otto Warburg and places his work in the context of our current understanding of metabolism and hypoxia in cancer.
The Notch family of receptors activate a complex web of cancer-relevant signalling pathways, and activating mutations inNOTCH1are common drivers of T cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (T-ALL). Despite this oncogenic role of NOTCH1 in T-ALL, mutations in Notch genes are rare in solid cancers. This Review discusses the growing evidence that deregulation of Notch signalling can indeed have a major role in the development of various solid tumours, and the oncogenic versus tumour suppressive roles of Notch signalling are highly context dependent.
The incidence of metastasis to the brain is apparently rising in cancer patients and threatens to limit the gains that have been made by new systemic treatments. As discussed in this Review, translational research that aims to improve the outcome for patients with brain metastases needs to be multi-disciplinary, marrying advanced chemistry, blood–brain barrier pharmacokinetics, neurocognitive testing and radiation biology with metastasis biology.
The calpains are a conserved family of cysteine proteinases that catalyse the controlled proteolysis of many specific substrates that are involved in proliferation, apoptosis and migration. Calpain expression is altered during tumorigenesis and can influence the response to cancer therapies, indicating a need for new calpain inhibitors.
There seem to be several overlapping processes that induce resistance to antibiotics for bacteria and chemotherapy for tumour cells. This Perspective discusses how our understanding of bacterial resistance to antibiotics might inform our understanding of the resistance of tumours to therapy.