Volume 18 Issue 6, June 2018

Wang et al. have developed a diagnostic tool (based on the widely used Papanicolaou (Pap) test) to detect endometrial and ovarian cancer in patients by using PCR-based analyses of genetic mutations and aneuploidy.

Ferrari de Andrade et al. find that monoclonal antibodies that prevent shedding of MICA and MICB from tumour cells can restore antitumour immunity by natural killer cells.

Han et al. have identified a new tumour-induced immune cell population in the spleen that can promote tumour growth through production of the neurotrophic factor artemin.

The MET oncogene encodes a receptor tyrosine kinase with pleiotropic functions. In this Review, Comoglio et al. describe the known and novel MET-mediated biological responses in cancer and discuss how clinical trials testing anti-MET therapies should be designed with careful consideration of these oncogenic functions of MET.

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.

This Opinion article highlights how activating mutations in the gene encoding oestrogen receptor-α (ERα), a major driver in breast cancer, undermine structural features of wild-type ERα that maintain the ‘off-state’ in the absence of oestrogens, thus making ERα constitutively active and endocrine-therapy resistant.

This Perspective provides an update on targeted therapy development for neuroblastoma and proposes that clinical trial design needs to be rethought in order to provide rigorous, evidence-based assessment of these new therapies in this rare and often deadly paediatric tumour.