News & Comment

The BRG1 catalytic subunit of the chromatin remodelling SWI/SNF complex has context-dependent functions during different stages of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma development from intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasia, and bromodomain and extraterminal inhibitors might be therapeutically beneficial in this subtype of pancreatic cancer.

The efficacy of dendritic cell vaccines can be improved in patients with glioblastoma by pre-conditioning the vaccine site with the tetanus/diphtheria toxoid.

Dual immune checkpoint blockade combined with radiation promotes effective antitumour immunity through distinct mechanisms.

Two papers inNature Geneticsreport on the role of stromal cells, especially cancer-associated fibroblasts, in poor-prognosis colorectal cancer.

Sottorivaet al. propose a model by which colorectal tumours evolve, which generates different types of spatial intratumoural heterogeneity.

Marzecet al. have described a new telomere-dependent mechanism by which genomic instability and chromosomal translocations can be induced in cancer cells that use alternative lengthening of telomeres for telomere maintenance.

Polaket al. have found that the mutation profile of a given cancer can be predicted from the epigenomic signature of the cell type from which that cancer was most likely to have originated.

Ortmann and Kentet al. show that the order of acquisition of Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) mutations and tet methylcytosine dioxygenase 2 (TET2) mutations in myeloproliferative neoplasms can affect tumour cell biology and clinical phenotypes.

Alberto Mantovani and colleagues have found that loss of a regulator of the complement cascade, penatraxin 3 (PTX3), accelerates tumour development in mice owing to a complement- and macrophage-mediated immune response.