Volume 19 Issue 1, January 2020

Immunotherapies that activate costimulatory receptors on T cells have failed so far in the clinic, but the first phase III trial of an agonist antibody in cancer has just begun and second-generation candidates are advancing.

Continued VC largesse and a maturing biotech industry in China helped boost 2019’s IPO totals.

Genomic screenings have enabled the discovery of synthetic lethal partners as potential drug targets in cancer. This Review discusses how the genetic concept of synthetic lethality paired with CRISPR-based functional genomic screening can be applied to identify additional synthetic lethal pairs as new and druggable cancer targets.

Cell plasticity has emerged as a mode of targeted therapy evasion in various cancers. This Review discusses the different mechanisms that drive tumour cell plasticity and the potential therapeutic strategies to target them in order to achieve more durable clinical responses.

Fibrosis features in numerous chronic diseases, such as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and heart failure, and no existing therapies can prevent or reverse this abnormal deposition of extracellular matrix, which leads to organ dysfunction. Here, Liu and colleagues describe how this energy-intensive process could be targeted by therapies that interfere with metabolism, including the metabolic implications of drugs directed at transforming growth factor-β and the deposition of extracellular matrix.