Reviews & Analysis

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  • 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.

    • Uri Ben-David
    • Rameen Beroukhim
    • Todd R. Golub
    Perspective
  • This Review discusses causal germline variants in prostate cancer identified through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and post-GWAS analyses. The latter are vital to identify causal variants and molecular mechanisms by which these variants promote prostate tumorigenesis, with potential clinical applications.

    • Samaneh Farashi
    • Thomas Kryza
    • Jyotsna Batra
    Review Article
  • In this Review, Altorki et al. discuss how the tumour-reprogrammed lung microenvironment can contribute to primary lung tumour progression as well as lung metastasis from extrapulmonary neoplasms by promoting inflammation, angiogenesis, immune modulation and therapeutic responses.

    • Nasser K. Altorki
    • Geoffrey J. Markowitz
    • Vivek Mittal
    Review Article
  • This Review discusses the evidence that whole-genome duplication as a consequence of cytokinesis failure can contribute to tumorigenesis.

    • Susanne M. A. Lens
    • René H. Medema
    Review Article
  • 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.

    • Marco Archetti
    • Kenneth J. Pienta
    Perspective
  • This Review discusses the interdependencies of mTOR signalling and metabolism pathways in cancer and how metabolic reprogramming in response to changes in mTOR signalling and vice versa can sustain tumorigenicity. The authors highlight therapeutic opportunities when targeting metabolism and mTOR.

    • Dirk Mossmann
    • Sujin Park
    • Michael N. Hall
    Review Article
  • 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.

    • Stefano Fais
    • Michael Overholtzer
    Perspective
  • 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.

    • Siqi Li
    • Allan Balmain
    • Christopher M. Counter
    Perspective
  • Therapy with live tumour-targeting bacteria represents a unique opportunity to address the limitations associated with molecularly targeted therapies and immunotherapies. In this Review, Zhou et al. discuss the benefits and challenges of this approach and outline advances in the engineering of bacteria, which have the potential to improve safety and efficacy.

    • Shibin Zhou
    • Claudia Gravekamp
    • Ke Liu
    Review Article
  • 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.

    • Alessio Nencioni
    • Irene Caffa
    • Valter D. Longo
    Perspective
  • This Review discusses how cells with stem cell characteristics often serve as the tumour cell of origin, as they are preferentially primed for transformation. Furthermore, the activation of stem cell programmes can be crucial for promoting cancer progression and therapy resistance.

    • Nikki K. Lytle
    • Alison G. Barber
    • Tannishtha Reya
    Review Article
  • This Review discusses the reprogramming of the urea cycle, the main metabolic liver pathway for nitrogen disposal, in cancer cells. The authors provide insight into the metabolic advantages and therapeutic opportunities stemming from urea cycle enzyme perturbations in cancer.

    • Rom Keshet
    • Peter Szlosarek
    • Ayelet Erez
    Review Article
  • Cancer is ubiquitous in wildlife and is an increasing concern for endangered species. This Review discusses the impact of cancer on animal species and highlights how studying these effects could reveal shared mechanisms of cancer predisposition between animals and humans.

    • Patricia A. Pesavento
    • Dalen Agnew
    • Kevin D. Woolard
    Review Article
  • This Review discusses nutrient scavenging, a process by which cancer cells use macromolecules from their environment to fuel cell metabolism and growth even when nutrients are limiting.

    • Brendan T. Finicle
    • Vaishali Jayashankar
    • Aimee L. Edinger
    Review Article
  • In this Review, Di Virgilio et al. describe how extracellular ATP and P2 purinergic signalling can shape the tumour microenvironment to both promote and restrain tumour progression and outline the opportunities to harness nucleotide receptor signalling as an anticancer strategy.

    • Francesco Di Virgilio
    • Alba Clara Sarti
    • Elena Adinolfi
    Review Article
  • In this Review, Hamidi and Ivaska discuss the contribution of integrins to the different steps of cancer progression, highlighting some of the recently identified unconventional roles of integrins and novel opportunities to target integrin signalling.

    • Hellyeh Hamidi
    • Johanna Ivaska
    Review Article
  • 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.

    • Emilio Lecona
    • Oscar Fernandez-Capetillo
    Perspective