News & Comment

Johanna Joyce received her PhD from the University of Cambridge, and did postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco. She then joined the faculty at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, becoming a tenured member in 2014. She moved to Switzerland in 2016, where she later served as the inaugural executive director of the Agora Cancer Center Lausanne. She is currently a member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and a professor at the University of Lausanne.

Gold-standard cancer data management is pivotal to enable precision medicine for European citizens. Achieving this goal relies on key elements: adopting standardized data formats, ensuring robust data privacy, educating professionals about the infrastructure’s benefits and leveraging cutting-edge technologies to transform cancer care.

Drug regulatory agencies in the USA and Europe have mechanisms to provide patients faster access to novel treatments, expecting that follow-up trials will confirm clinically meaningful results. However, some early approvals are subsequently withdrawn. Here we discuss the insights gained from withdrawn accelerated approvals for oncologic agents in the past decade.

Anirban Maitra obtained his medical degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, in 1996; this was followed by residency and fellowships in pathology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore. From 2002 to 2013, he served as faculty in the departments of pathology and oncology at Johns Hopkins, before being recruited to the MD Anderson Cancer Center as Professor of Pathology and Translational Molecular Pathology and Scientific Director of the Sheikh Ahmed Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research.

Rebecca Fitzgerald completed her medical degree at the University of Cambridge, followed by doctoral research at Stanford University, and then postdoctoral research alongside specialist training in gastroenterology at Barts and the London Hospitals. She started her own independent group the MRC Cancer Unit in 2001 with an honorary gastroenterology consultant position at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. In 2014, she was elected to chair in cancer prevention, and in 2022 inaugural director of the department of oncology at the Early Cancer Institute, University of Cambridge.

We bid farewell to the past year with a set of specially commissioned commentaries, news articles and a selection of highlights from the cancer research literature.

Bispecific T cell engagers and antibody–drug conjugates took center stage in a year that also brought several new kinds of small-molecule therapies.

From halted healthcare services and corrupted code to stolen personal data held for ransom, cyberwarfare knows no boundaries. Healthcare providers are now facing unprecedented challenges from hackers, with uncertain consequences to patients with cancer.