Comment

Social media has revolutionized health-care communication across medicine, particularly in the field of oncology. In this Comment, Manochakian and Dizon highlight the role of social media in promoting patient-driven cancer research to benefit all.

In this Comment article, Bhangu and Caduff describe how the social science of medical anthropology uses qualitative methods to better understand how people in different parts of the world perceive and experience illness, and how this field of study emphasizes research approaches that humanize and add richness to our understanding of cancer in complex settings.

Complex therapies and multimodal interventions have become the gold standard approach for many of the most aggressive tumour types. However, there is a lack of models that enable the development and clinical translation of such treatment concepts. In this Comment, Saur and Schnieke present an argument for porcine cancer models filling this gap.

mRNA vaccines have proven safe and effective in preventing serious illness and death during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Comment, Morris and Kopetz argue that these technologies offer a novel approach towards personalizing immune-based treatments for patients with cancer with the potential for immune activation beyond commonly utilized immunotherapies.

The African Esophageal Cancer Consortium is a self-organized consortium of more than 80 physicians and scientists working in eastern and southern African countries. This Comment highlights the role that international collaborations with regional partners at their centre play in expanding local capacities for research and care to address cancer disparities.

In this Comment, Deb et al. explore ‘cancer art’ projects that enable new conversations for a broader audience, advocate for policy and disparity issues, and lead to creative innovations for research.

In this Comment article, Mya Roberson outlines the important historical and contemporary place Critical Race Theory has in cancer research across basic, clinical and translational research, as well as population health sciences.

In this Comment article, Alicea and Rebecca advocate for increased basic research and translational studies of acral lentiginous melanoma using the patient communities that suffer the most in order to develop therapies that benefit patients across all ethnic and racial groups.

Significant gaps in access to care have shifted the burden of cervical cancer disease to resource-poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The recent World Health Organization’s Call to Action to eliminate cervical cancer is a unique opportunity to galvanize change and remove barriers to prevention and care.

A systematic approach to understanding the noncoding genome in cancer promises to improve cancer diagnosis and therapy. New technologies and bold therapeutic approaches are paving the way to truly envisage personalized cancer medicine in the future.

Cancer genomics research in Africa is crucial to understanding the genetic architecture of cancer and tailoring cancer diagnoses and therapies to African populations. Creating this research enterprise in Africa has to be purposeful with a roadmap that incorporates individual scientist-, international collaborator-, university or institution-, and scientific organization-level factors.

The incidence of early-onset colorectal cancer (EOCRC) continues to rise and disproportionately affects people of African descent. This Comment advocates for mechanistic studies that can help mitigate EOCRC disparities.

Research funders are uniquely placed to develop and promote collaborations between multiple partners, including industry, in a positive and ethical way. This Comment calls for funders to take action to ensure that discoveries progress from the lab to patients with cancer.

There is evidence of a mounting mental health crisis among researchers, which may be exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This Comment article discusses what cancer researchers and institutions can do to promote good mental health and wellbeing within their research communities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has broadly impacted biomedical research and health care. Here we discuss current challenges for the cancer research community as they apply to early career investigators (ECIs). We propose a series of collaborative initiatives aimed to sustain ECIs and preserve and accelerate the ability to innovate with long-lasting impact.

In conflict-affected areas, people experience significant challenges in health-care delivery, and this situation is even more extreme for patients with cancer. Until now, research on access to cancer treatment and care as well as cancer disparities in war-torn and post-war regions has been limited. Therefore, we advocate coordinated, global action to address this issue and implement evidence-based solutions.

In this Comment, the author, a cancer researcher and breast cancer survivor, discusses her experience as a patient with cancer and how it influenced her approach to research.

This Comment article argues that the future successes of rare cancer research will require alternative approaches for diagnosing, researching and conducting clinical trials, which will ultimately benefit patients with all types of cancer.

The use of social media for the dissemination of published and unpublished scientific findings has exploded over the past few years. In this Comment article, Soragni and Maitra explain some of the ways in which Twitter can be used by academics to promote their science.

This Comment article argues that genomic, epigenomic and other studies on cancer in diverse populations across low-income and middle-income countries are essential in order to reduce worldwide cancer burden and improve global health.