Browse Articles

In this Tools of the Trade article, Francisco Barriga describes the development and use of MACHETE, a flexible deletion engineering strategy, which enables the functional characterization of the large genomic deletions that occur in cancer.

Fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma is a rare cancer type and, as such, research into this disease comes with many challenges. In this Perspective, Sanford Simon tells of his personal journey and experiences in the fight against this rare cancer type.

In this study, the authors investigate the mechanistic basis of alternative telomere lengthening, a process that certain cancer cells use to overcome telomere shortening.

Altea-Manzano et al. find that factors secreted by primary breast tumours or high-fat diet feeding enriches the fatty acid palmitate in distant organs, which primes pre-metastatic niches enabling metastatic growth.

In this study, Linde et al. demonstrate how therapeutic activation of neutrophils leads to tumour eradication and reduced metastatic seeding in multiple mouse models of cancer.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Susan Bullman describes the development and use of INVADEseq, a single-cell RNA sequencing approach that facilitates the simultaneous capture of both eukaryotic and bacterial transcripts in host cells to functionally understand the intratumoural microbiota.

In this Perspective, Tsoumakidou explores the emerging role of cancer-associated fibroblasts as positive regulators of the adaptive immune system in cancer.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Lee describes Select-seq, a novel method for generating epitranscriptomic data from microniches within the tumour. The author reveals how the method can be used to identify novel biomarkers from rare cell subpopulations such as cancer stem cells in tumours.

Clinical correlative data and a plethora of preclinical studies of cancers have shown that both tumour-associated and metastasis-associated macrophages play an important role in promoting cancer. In this Perspective article, Cassetta and Pollard chronologically explore the evolution of our understanding of tumour-associated macrophage biology and enabling technologies.

In this study, Jung-Garcia et al. use in vitro and in vivo modelling to demonstrate the role of LAP1 in promoting melanoma cell invasion and highlight its link to metastatic dissemination.

Myeloid cells in the tumour microenvironment strongly influence tumour progression, and targeting these cells has been a key clinical focus. In this Review, Barry et al. discuss preclinical and clinical data on myeloid-targeting therapies, with a focus on how understanding context-specific effects might aid the design of successful clinical trials for these drugs.

This study shows how the selective immune pressure in early-stage tumours drives interferon-γ-dependent metabolic reprogramming in cancer cells to mediate immune escape.

This Review outlines how the profound intertumoural heterogeneity in immune landscapes of tumours is shaped by cancer cell-intrinsic alterations and highlights how the crosstalk between these two continuously evolving systems not only challenges therapy success of immunomodulatory drugs but also provides the basis for new therapeutic strategies to overcome immune evasion.

Acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA) is a key metabolite in carbohydrate and lipid metabolism and plays a role in signalling through protein acetylation, and the dysregulation of these pathways is a hallmark of various cancers. In this Review, Guertin and Wellen give an overview of acetyl-CoA metabolism in health and in cancer and discuss emerging therapeutic strategies for targeting metabolic pathways involving acetyl-CoA.

To understand malignant progression, Yuan et al. delineate the complex crosstalk between cancer stem cells and their microenvironment that is initiated by oncogenic RAS.

This Review discusses the diverse ways in which cancer-associated RNA splicing dysregulation promotes tumour initiation and progression, existing and emerging approaches for targeting splicing for cancer therapy and outstanding questions and challenges in the field.

Reprogrammed metabolism is a hallmark of cancer. Here, Li, Zhang and colleagues describe how signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) proteins alter cancer cell metabolism by sensing and transducing signals from the tumour environment and modulating signalling pathways, transcription factors, mitochondrial proteins and enzymes.

In a study in Nature, Wang et al. describe how circadian rhythms can impact tumour suppression through their effects on dendritic cells, a finding that could help to optimize clinical trials of cancer immunotherapies.

As well-established players in the metastatic cascade, circulating tumour cells (CTCs) hold promise for improved cancer diagnosis and disease monitoring. In this Review, Ring et al. overview the current understanding of CTC biology, highlighting specific opportunities and vulnerabilities for future CTC-focused therapies.