Prognosis articles within Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology

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  • Review Article |

    With the development of novel targeted therapies for patients with colorectal cancer, comes a wealth of new, and increasingly complex information on biomarkers. In this Review, the authors describe this increased complexity, with a focus on interactions between more than one biomarker and the implications of these interactions for patient management.

    • Anita Sveen
    • , Scott Kopetz
    •  & Ragnhild A. Lothe

  • News & Views |

    Identification of factors predicting recurrence of breast cancer is a long-standing goal, ranging from classical clinicopathological factors through to immunohistochemical assays of receptor levels and, more recently, the expression levels of several genes. A new paper now explores novel expression markers, especially for late recurrence of oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer.

    • Jack Cuzick

  • News & Views |

    The International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP)–Paediatric Oncology in Developing Countries (PODC) Collaborative Wilms Tumour Africa project delivered treatment in eight centres across five countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Setting up a collaboration like this is easier said than done, and herein we share the lessons we learned along the way.

    • Trijn Israels
    •  & Elizabeth M. Molyneux

  • Review Article |

    The majority of patients receiving immunotherapy do not respond to treatment but might still have adverse events. Furthermore, some patients with an initial response will develop acquired resistance to treatment. In this Review, the authors describe the role of circulating tumour DNA in the management of patients receiving immunotherapy.

    • Luc Cabel
    • , Charlotte Proudhon
    •  & François-Clément Bidard

  • Perspective |

    Despite extensive research efforts, very few DNA methylation-based biomarkers have been implemented clinically. In this Perspective, the authors describe the importance of considering the genomic locations examined in determining the diagnostic or prognostic relevance of putative DNA methylation-based biomarkers.

    • Alexander Koch
    • , Sophie C. Joosten
    •  & Manon van Engeland

  • Review Article |

    The development of cancer involves several epigenomic alterations, and the presence of certain alterations before the development of cancer is associated with cancer risk. In this Review, the authors describe the potential of epigenomics-based assays to predict an individual's risk of cancer, including discussions of technical, practical and societal issues regarding the implementation of such assays.

    • Martin Widschwendter
    • , Allison Jones
    •  & Nora Pashayan

  • Review Article |

    Despite the achievement of locoregional control, a third of patients undergoing surgery for cancer will have disease recurrence. In this Review, the authors describe the potential to optimize the outcomes of patients with cancer by minimizing inflammation and activation of the sympathetic nervous system in the perioperative period, which is often achievable with simple and cost-effective changes in patient-management strategies.

    • Jonathan G. Hiller
    • , Nicholas J. Perry
    •  & Erica K. Sloan

  • News & Views |

    Response criteria for disease assessment have important therapeutic and prognostic implications in clinical trials and in routine clinical practice. The Lugano classification has been used widely for evaluation of the response of patients with lymphoma to treatment, although the alternative Response Evaluation Criteria In Lymphoma 2017 (RECIL 2017) classification was recently proposed; these criteria are compared herein.

    • Vijaya R. Bhatt
    •  & James O. Armitage

  • Review Article |

    Patients with early stage breast cancer have traditionally been assigned adjuvant systemic therapies on the basis of the clinical and histological characteristics of their disease. However, this approach often leads to overtreatment. In this Review, the authors describe the use of gene-expression signatures, some of which are already in clinical use, for determining the risks of recurrence and progression, and the most appropriate form of adjuvant therapy.

    • Maryann Kwa
    • , Andreas Makris
    •  & Francisco J. Esteva

  • News & Views |

    The 21-gene recurrence score is a genetic assay developed to estimate the likelihood of distant recurrence in patients with oestrogen-receptor-positive, lymph-node-negative breast cancer treated with adjuvant endocrine therapy. Now, two studies explore how the 21-gene recurrence score has been used to inform treatment decisions in this setting and beyond.

    • Shannon L. Puhalla
    •  & Nancy E. Davidson

  • Review Article |

    Chromosome instability (CIN) is gaining increasing interest as a central process in cancer, and is indicated whenever tumour cells harbour an abnormal quantity of DNA, termed 'aneuploidy'. In this Review, the authors review the literature published since 2000 that support the hypothesis that aneuploidy is a predictor of a poor prognosis in patients with cancer, focusing on the evidence from studies of seven common epithelial cancer types that performed multivariate analyses. The implications of ploidy analysis with regard to our theoretical understanding of the role of CIN in carcinogenesis, as well as its prognostic use in the clinic, are discussed.

    • Håvard E. Danielsen
    • , Manohar Pradhan
    •  & Marco Novelli

  • Opinion |

    Currently, most novel chemotherapies are initially tested in tumour cell lines and xenografts, which generally fail to reflect the full spectrum of tumour-specific mutations, and might explain the low success rates of experimental treatments. In this Perspectives, the mouse hospital co-clinical trial project is described, which enables treatments to be tested in mouse models that accurately reflect the tumour characteristics of individual patients.

    • John G. Clohessy
    •  & Pier Paolo Pandolfi

  • News & Views |

    When a pregnant woman is diagnosed with cancer, clinical management is complicated by concerns about the possible detrimental effects of cancer treatments on pregnancy outcome and the health of the baby. Evidence about the outcomes of children after maternal chemotherapy for cancer during pregnancy is growing and we can say 'the kids are all right'.

    • Fedro A. Peccatori
    • , Giacomo Corrado
    •  & Monica Fumagalli

  • Opinion |

    The standard treatment for advanced-stage ovarian cancer is upfront cytoreductive surgery, and the extent of residual disease after surgery correlates with response to adjuvant therapy and disease outcomes. This Perspectives article provides an overview of the historical progression of primary cytoreduction and definitions of 'optimal' residual disease. In addition, approaches to personalizing surgical therapy and improving the quality of surgical care are discussed.

    • Alpa M. Nick
    • , Robert L. Coleman
    •  & Anil K. Sood

  • Review Article |

    The perioperative timeframe is pivotal in determining long-term cancer outcomes. This Review covers the various aspects of surgery which could facilitate the metastatic process. Through understanding these processes and reviewing empirical evidence, the authors provide suggestions for potential new perioperative interventions aimed at attenuating deleterious processes and improving treatment outcomes. The measures described in this Review could transform the perioperative timeframe from a prominent facilitator of metastatic progression, to a window of opportunity for arresting and/or eliminating residual disease.

    • Maya Horowitz
    • , Elad Neeman
    •  & Shamgar Ben-Eliyahu

  • Review Article |

    The treatment options available for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) vary depending on prognostic factors that include tumour characteristics and clinical status, particularly with regard to liver function. This Review discusses the links between disease phenotype, prognosis and therapy, focusing on the subclassification of patients with intermediate-stage HCC following the BCLC staging system, who are usually ineligible for curative resection and ablation treatments or liver transplantation; the therapies that are available for this patient subgroup are described.

    • Alejandro Forner
    • , Marine Gilabert
    •  & Jean-Luc Raoul

  • Review Article |

    Low-risk prostate cancer is diagnosed in nearly half of men undergoing screening. About a third of these men harbour high-grade cancer that is not detected by conventional systematic biopsy. Should we treat men with low-risk prostate on the basis that it might be of higher grade than it seems? Should we treat it to prevent future progression to a more aggressive form of cancer? What are the nonivasive treatment options for these men? In this Review, Mark Emberton and Laurence Klotz discuss the two current choices to manage low-risk prostate cancer: active surveillance and focal therapy.

    • Laurence Klotz
    •  & Mark Emberton

  • Review Article |

    Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) might be representative of the tumour burden and might also provide information on tumour cell biology. As such, these cells hold promise in the prediction and monitoring of response to anticancer therapy. In this Review, the authors highlight the challenges of monitoring treatment response in metastatic castrate-resistance prostate cancer and discuss the developments in CTC analyses that have increased the value of these cells as potential biomarkers in this disease.

    • David T. Miyamoto
    • , Lecia V. Sequist
    •  & Richard J. Lee

  • Review Article |

    Small bowel adenocarcinomas are rare, histologically diverse tumours and their incidence worldwide is increasing. Despite this, research efforts have received comparatively little attention compared with other cancers with a similar incidence. The authors present an evidence-based approach to present-day management of small bowel adenocarcinoma, describe contemporary challenges and uncover evolving paradigms in the management of these rare neoplasias.

    • Kanwal Raghav
    •  & Michael J. Overman

  • News & Views |

    As we learn more about the biology of cancer, we may be able to apply prognostic biomarkers to select patients at high risk or low risk of disease recurrence or progression. This will allow a priori stratification of patients in clinical trials and will help to tailor treatment to patients.

    • David J. Kerr
    •  & Yuankai Shi

  • News & Views |

    Nomograms have been constructed to provide patient-specific predictions for overall survival and disease-free survival after resection for patients with primary localized retroperitoneal soft tissue sarcoma, by combining data registered across three institutional databases. However, whether overall survival, or disease-free survival, is a more useful predictor is disputable.

    • Murray F. Brennan

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