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In this Tools of the Trade article, Xinwen Liu describes the development of VIBRANT, a vibrational spectroscopy method for high-content phenotypic profiling, and highlights its use to predict drug mechanisms of action or identify potential drug candidates.
The World Trade Center (WTC) disaster exposed individuals to carcinogens, leading to elevated cancer rates. Responders who received care through the WTC Health Program have higher survival rates. Twenty-three years post-disaster, we summarize cancer incidence and outcome studies in this population and highlight the importance of a dedicated health programme response.
In a recent Nature paper, Ruggero and colleagues found that fasting and ketogenic diets induce metabolic rewiring through a translational mechanism involving MNK-mediated phosphorylation of eIF4E, which enhances ketogenesis. This process creates a metabolic vulnerability in pancreatic cancer that could be therapeutically exploited.
Clonal evolution is now a central theoretical framework in cancer research. In this Perspective, Laplane and Maley identify challenges to that theory such that some non-evolutionary phenomena in cancer cannot be captured by the theory. They also outline how other challenges, including non-genetic heredity, phenotypic plasticity, reticulate evolution and clone diversity, can be included in an expanded cancer evolutionary theory.
In this Review, Arpinati et al. summarize how the extracellular matrix, produced primarily by cancer-associated fibroblasts, impacts tumour progression, metastasis and therapy response through modulation of T cell-mediated antitumour immunity and propose routes to target these mechanisms therapeutically.
In this Tools of the Trade article, Radhika Mathur describes the development of a novel 3D whole-tumour sampling approach for glioblastoma, which can be used to elucidate tumour heterogeneity.
Pan et al. performed a large-scale, cluster-randomized controlled trial to assess whether eradicating Helicobacter pylori in asymptomatic individuals would be beneficial in preventing gastric cancer.
Resistance to therapy remains the biggest challenge to achieving cures in patients with cancer. In this Roadmap, Russo et al. overview the field of cancer drug-tolerant persister cells providing paths to advance our understanding of their biology with innovative technologies and recommend strategies to therapeutically target them to ensure that more prolonged responses are achieved in patients with cancer.
Various strategies have been proposed and implemented to target the tumour vasculature, which supports tumour growth and progression. However, to date they have had variable success. Guelfi et al. describe some of these approaches and discuss how our increased understanding of the interactions between tumour vessels and the immune compartment could help generate combination therapies that provide durable responses in patients with cancer.
Cancer screening, diagnosis and care can benefit greatly from advances in artificial intelligence (AI). In this Comment, Ghassemi and Gusev discuss how AI applications must address and avoid known racial and gender biases to improve health care for all.
Inflammation is well established as a risk factor for cancer development in the gut. In this study, Fesneau et al. identify a specific immune cell population, derived from T helper 17 (TH17) cells, that can initiate intestinal cancer.
Integrative medicine incorporated alongside cancer care, referred to as integrative oncology, is an evidence-informed field with established clinical guidelines. Although integrative oncology improves patient outcomes, it is inconsistently provided to patients. To align with best practices, it is necessary to increase awareness of integrative oncology, improve access to treatments, and provide consistent financial healthcare coverage.
In this Journal Club, Koh and Im discuss a study demonstrating the unique evolutionary trajectory of breast cancers harbouring the common driver alteration der(1;16).
Transient ectopic lymphoid structures known as tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) have been observed in many solid tumour types. In this Review, Teillaud et al. discuss how these TLS potentially orchestrate immune responses against tumours locally and are positively associated with prognosis and response to immune checkpoint inhibitors. The authors also outline how preclinical studies are highlighting the potential to manipulate the formation and function of TLS as a novel form of immunotherapy.
In a recent study published in Nature, lactate has been identified as a key player in enhancing DNA repair mechanisms in gastric cancer by promoting lactylation of DNA repair proteins, leading to chemotherapy resistance.
Pregnancy involves immune system suppression to protect the fetus, making it a valuable model for understanding cancer immune tolerance. Recently in Cell, Yu et al. identified B7-H4 as a common immune tolerance checkpoint in both tumours and the placenta.
This poster explores rational combinations of immune checkpoint blockade of the PD1–PDL1 interaction with other therapies aimed at targeting effector T cells, innate immune and regulatory cells, the tumour microenvironment and cancer cells.
