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Read primary research, opinion and comment highlighting the complexities of cancer. 

Latest Research

  • Article |

    Diehn and colleagues report that assaying circulating DNA in patients receiving chemoradiation therapy for non-small-cell lung cancer could identify the patients most likely to benefit from consolidation immunotherapy.

    • Everett J. Moding
    • , Yufei Liu
    • , Barzin Y. Nabet
    • , Jacob J. Chabon
    • , Aadel A. Chaudhuri
    • , Angela B. Hui
    • , Rene F. Bonilla
    • , Ryan B. Ko
    • , Christopher H. Yoo
    • , Linda Gojenola
    • , Carol D. Jones
    • , Jianzhong He
    • , Yawei Qiao
    • , Ting Xu
    • , John V. Heymach
    • , Anne Tsao
    • , Zhongxing Liao
    • , Daniel R. Gomez
    • , Millie Das
    • , Sukhmani K. Padda
    • , Kavitha J. Ramchandran
    • , Joel W. Neal
    • , Heather A. Wakelee
    • , Billy W. Loo Jr
    • , Steven H. Lin
    • , Ash A. Alizadeh
    •  & Maximilian Diehn
  • Article |

    Cong et al. show that MTSS1 suppresses breast cancer initiation by promoting ubiquitin-mediated suppression of the NF-κB pathway. Loss of this regulatory mechanism promotes the activation and expansion of tumor-initiating cells.

    • Min Cong
    • , Yuan Wang
    • , Yang Yang
    • , Cheng Lian
    • , Xueqian Zhuang
    • , Xiaoxun Li
    • , Peiyuan Zhang
    • , Yingjie Liu
    • , Jun Tang
    • , Qifeng Yang
    • , Xue Zhang
    • , Hua Xiong
    • , Ronggui Hu
    •  & Guohong Hu
  • Resource |

    Golub and colleagues tested thousands of drugs not originally developed for oncology across 578 human cancer cell lines, revealing growth-inhibitory effects and providing a resource to identify drugs with the potential to be repurposed for cancer.

    • Steven M. Corsello
    • , Rohith T. Nagari
    • , Ryan D. Spangler
    • , Jordan Rossen
    • , Mustafa Kocak
    • , Jordan G. Bryan
    • , Ranad Humeidi
    • , David Peck
    • , Xiaoyun Wu
    • , Andrew A. Tang
    • , Vickie M. Wang
    • , Samantha A. Bender
    • , Evan Lemire
    • , Rajiv Narayan
    • , Philip Montgomery
    • , Uri Ben-David
    • , Colin W. Garvie
    • , Yejia Chen
    • , Matthew G. Rees
    • , Nicholas J. Lyons
    • , James M. McFarland
    • , Bang T. Wong
    • , Li Wang
    • , Nancy Dumont
    • , Patrick J. O’Hearn
    • , Eric Stefan
    • , John G. Doench
    • , Caitlin N. Harrington
    • , Heidi Greulich
    • , Matthew Meyerson
    • , Francisca Vazquez
    • , Aravind Subramanian
    • , Jennifer A. Roth
    • , Joshua A. Bittker
    • , Jesse S. Boehm
    • , Christopher C. Mader
    • , Aviad Tsherniak
    •  & Todd R. Golub
  • Article |

    Kupper and colleagues introduce the T-cell fraction as a molecular assessment of T-cell-mediated antitumor responses in primary melanomas that can predict metastatic recurrence.

    • Wiebke Pruessmann
    • , Julie Rytlewski
    • , James Wilmott
    • , Martin C. Mihm Jr
    • , Grace H. Attrill
    • , Beatrice Dyring-Andersen
    • , Paul Fields
    • , Qian Zhan
    • , Andrew J. Colebatch
    • , Peter M. Ferguson
    • , John F. Thompson
    • , Klaus Kallenbach
    • , Erik Yusko
    • , Rachael A. Clark
    • , Harlan Robins
    • , Richard A. Scolyer
    •  & Thomas S. Kupper
  • Article |

    Anagnostou et al. present an improved predictor of response to immune checkpoint blockade that integrates estimates of tumor mutational burden corrected for tumor purity, RTK genomic alterations, a smoking-related mutational signature and HLA status.

    • Valsamo Anagnostou
    • , Noushin Niknafs
    • , Kristen Marrone
    • , Daniel C. Bruhm
    • , James R. White
    • , Jarushka Naidoo
    • , Karlijn Hummelink
    • , Kim Monkhorst
    • , Ferry Lalezari
    • , Mara Lanis
    • , Samuel Rosner
    • , Joshua E. Reuss
    • , Kellie N. Smith
    • , Vilmos Adleff
    • , Kristen Rodgers
    • , Zineb Belcaid
    • , Lamia Rhymee
    • , Benjamin Levy
    • , Josephine Feliciano
    • , Christine L. Hann
    • , David S. Ettinger
    • , Christos Georgiades
    • , Franco Verde
    • , Peter Illei
    • , Qing Kay Li
    • , Alexander S. Baras
    • , Edward Gabrielson
    • , Malcolm V. Brock
    • , Rachel Karchin
    • , Drew M. Pardoll
    • , Stephen B. Baylin
    • , Julie R. Brahmer
    • , Robert B. Scharpf
    • , Patrick M. Forde
    •  & Victor E. Velculescu

News & Comment

  • News & Views |

    Drug repurposing is an attractive strategy for extending the arsenal of oncology therapies. Screening of a large collection of existing non-oncology compounds against a panel of cancer cell lines now identifies several drugs capable of selectively inhibiting the growth of cancer cells.

    • Roderick L. Beijersbergen
  • Comment |

    By integrating discovery science with clinical practice and therapeutic intervention, clinician-scientists fulfil a unique role in cancer research. However, their numbers are in decline, which is creating the need for flexible training and research opportunities to ensure their future.

    • Karen Noble
    • , Joanna Owens
    • , Fabrice André
    • , Samuel F. Bakhoum
    • , Sherene Loi
    • , Hans Christian Reinhardt
    • , David Tuveson
    •  & Charles Swanton
  • News & Views |

    Identifying cancer driver mutations is essential to understand disease biology and devise effective therapies, but remains a complex endeavor. A focused analytical approach is now presented that defines driver mutations affecting ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis through machine learning and mining of cancer multi-omics data.

    • Han Liang
  • Q&A |

    Norman E. ‘Ned’ Sharpless became director of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 2017. From April 2019, he served as acting commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and he returned to the NCI in November. Douglas R. Lowy has been the principal deputy director of the NCI since 2010, having also served as acting director twice, most recently in 2019. Nature Cancer spoke with both last fall to learn more about what makes NCI and its leadership tick.

    • Alexia-Ileana Zaromytidou
  • Comment |

    Intratumoral genetic heterogeneity of driver somatic mutations is present in a variety of tumor types, yet the extent of heterogeneity is variable. We propose that this variation is a reflection of the inherent biology of a given tumor type, representing the pace of metastatic dissemination and hence clinical disease course.

    • Christine A. Iacobuzio-Donahue
    • , Kevin Litchfield
    •  & Charles Swanton
  • Viewpoint |

    Cancer research in recent years has been marked by significant developments in understanding disease biology and foundational discoveries that have changed clinical practice. Ten cancer researchers take stock of the field, the advances that excite them, key outstanding questions and breakthroughs they anticipate looking forward.

    • René Bernards
    • , Elizabeth Jaffee
    • , Johanna A. Joyce
    • , Scott W. Lowe
    • , Elaine R. Mardis
    • , Sean J. Morrison
    • , Kornelia Polyak
    • , Cynthia L. Sears
    • , Karen H. Vousden
    •  & Zemin Zhang