In this Perspective, the authors suggest that different tumour microenvironments have ‘archetypal’ qualities across all cancers — characteristic and repeating collections of cells and gene-expression profiles at the level of the bulk tumour. They propose the existence of 12 dominant immune archetypes.

In this Review, Schwenck et al. discuss how PET imaging of cancer has advanced through its combination with CT and MRI and the development of an array of imaging probes, and how these innovations now need to be fully integrated into the clinic to improve cancer diagnostics and guide therapy.

In this Review, Banushi et al. discuss how endocytotic pathways impact many cancer processes including nutrient scavenging, metastasis and therapeutic drug delivery, and how knowledge of these pathways can be used to improve cancer therapy in the clinic.

Eukaryotic initiation factor 4F (eIF4F) controls the translation of a subset of transcripts that include those encoding oncogenic proteins. In this Perspective article, Bartish et al. discuss the implications of targeting eIF4F on immune and stromal cells in the tumour microenvironment. In addition to discussing data from cancer models, the authors incorporate extensive data from non-cancer contexts to identify potential desirable or unwanted effects of eIF4F inhibition in these cells.