Perspectives

This Opinion discusses the effects of dietary factors on tumour growth and progression through changes in nutrient availability and metabolism, proposing an experimental framework for the investigation of the connections between diet and tumour metabolism.

To date, very few actionable tumour-specific antigens (TSAs) have been identified that have successfully translated into therapeutic cancer vaccines. This Opinion article provides both examples of TSAs alternative to the traditional single-nucleotide variant neoantigens and details about the novel computational tools used to identify them, with the view to broaden the number of targetable antigens that can be used for cancer vaccine development.

This Opinion article provides an overview of the mechanisms that regulate sensitivity to ferroptosis in cancer cells and how the modulation of metabolic pathways controlling ferroptosis might reshape the tumour niche, leading to an immunosuppressive microenvironment that promotes tumour progression.

For any given cancer type, there are patients who have exceptionally favourable or atypically poor responses to treatment and overall survival. This Opinion article outlines approaches to identify and study these patients at the extremes of the spectrum with a view to gain insights that will be applicable to the wider patient population.

The implementation of screening tests for certain cancers has led to the phenomenon of overdiagnosis, whereby a cancer is diagnosed that would otherwise not go on to cause symptoms or death. This Opinion article discusses the effects of overdiagnosis and emerging strategies to reduce overdiagnosis of indolent cancers through an understanding of tumour biology and the tumour microenvironment.

This Opinion discusses three different mechanisms by which high-dose vitamin C can be selectively toxic to cancer cells. These findings from preclinical studies will be beneficial for the design of clinical trials testing high-dose vitamin C as an anticancer therapy.

This Opinion, written by many leading experts in small cell lung cancer (SCLC) research, proposes a new model of SCLC subtypes defined by differential expression of four key transcription regulators. Such classification should help to focus and accelerate therapeutic research.

The existence of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in cancer was first described decades ago, but recent reports of oncogene amplification on ecDNA have reinvigorated interest in this field. This Perspectives article discusses the potential implications of oncogene amplification on ecDNA in cancer.

Genomic instability in cancer models presents a major challenge in the design and reproducibility of research and its clinical translation. This Opinion article discusses the causes and consequences of intra-tumour genomic heterogeneity and instability in commonly used models and implications thereof.

This Opinion argues that understanding the interactions between cells that occur in tumours requires concepts from evolutionary game theory. Game theory can provide insights into the stability of cooperation among cells in a tumour and how this might be used therapeutically.

This Opinion describes cell-in-cell processes in cancer, providing insight into their functional purpose in tumour tissue. Entosis is a unique process in which cancer cells are actively invaded by other cells, conferring them a competitive advantage that may drive cancer evolution.

In this Opinion, Li et al. put forward the idea that there is a narrow window or ‘sweet spot’ in which oncogenic RAS signalling can promote tumour initiation in normal cells and present the evidence that RAS mutation patterns are the product of selection for optimal RAS mutations to achieve the ideal level of signalling.

This Opinion discusses the potential of fasting and fasting-mimicking diets to help overcome toxicities induced by anticancer therapy. The differential response of normal and cancer cells undergoing starvation is argued to make normal cells less sensitive to therapy-induced toxicity, while cancer cells become more sensitive to therapy-induced cell death.

This Opinion provides insight into the potential of targeting the replication stress response in cancer and discusses the strategy of inhibiting ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3-related protein (ATR) and the need for reliable biomarkers to enable patient stratification.

This Opinion proposes that temporal variations in intratumoural blood flow are the result of eco-evolutionary dynamics. It describes adaptive strategies to stochastically varying environments that may strongly affect observed cancer phenotypes and clinical outcomes including formation of metastases and response to treatment.

This Opinion discusses the role of the primary cilium as a platform for pathways implicated in cancer and how changes in the ciliation of cells in the tumour microenvironment can affect cancer progression.

In this Opinion, Joshi et al. argue that in cancer cells, a state of chaperome hyperconnectivity is obtained by increasing the interaction strength among chaperome machinery members. These chaperome scaffolding platforms act to increase the functional diversity of oncogenic processes and have implications for the development of chaperome inhibitors.

In this Opinion article, Hosny et al. discuss the application of artificial intelligence to image-based tasks in the field of radiology and consider the advantages and challenges of its clinical implementation.

In this Timeline article, Maman and Witz describe how much progress has been made in understanding how the tumour microenvironment influences tumour progression since its initial description, highlighting the controversies in the field and the potential of targeting components of the microenvironment for cancer therapy.

In this Opinion article, Twumasi-Boateng et al. discuss the use of oncolytic viruses as multiplexed immune-modulating platforms with the potential to improve the effectiveness of immunotherapies through novel synergistic mechanisms promoting antitumour immune activity.