2022 in Review

This month we present a dedicated Focus issue, ‘2022 in Review’, that includes news, analysis and comment on the most exciting advances and biggest challenges of the past year, together with a selection of the most popular primary research articles published in Nature Cancer over the past 12 months.

See our December Editorial and associated Focus content

Combining neoadjuvant radiation and immune checkpoint therapy in HNSCC

Combining SBRT and immune-checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab neoadjuvantly in a Phase I/Ib clinical trial in patients with HPV-unrelated HNSCC led to a high percentage of patients responding with major pathological response or complete response. Images: high-dimensional characterization of the tumor microenvironment before treatment (left two panels) and after treatment (right two panels) highlights the immune system's response to therapy.

See Darragh et al.

Activating complement for cancer immunotherapy

Oncogenic EGFR signaling inhibits anti-tumor immunity via suppression of the complement system, which can be reversed to enhance immunotherapy response in non-small cell lung cancer.

See Shao et al. See also related N&Vs by Cremer & Roumenina

Shedding light on PARP inhibitor therapy for PDAC

METTL16–RNA complexes sensitize pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells to inhibitors of the DNA-repair enzyme PARP1 by hindering DNA end resection.

See Zeng et al. and the accompanying News & Views article by Perez-Pepe and Alarcón

Immune checkpoint blockade impairs ovarian health and fertility

Ovarian function and reserve (conceptually depicted here as an ovum surrounded by follicular cells) is impaired in mice treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors, which raises potential fertility considerations for human patients.

See Winship et al. and the accompanying News & Views by Roberts and Dougan

Targeting solid tumors by inducing ER stress

Induction of endoplasmic reticulum stress through binding of a small molecule to lysosomal acid lipase A induces tumor cell death in triple-negative breast cancer without adverse effects on non-cancerous cells.

See Liu et al.

The expanding palette of immunotherapy

In this issue, we launch a Series on Cancer Immunotherapy presenting commissioned Reviews and opinion pieces on the latest advances and challenges in the expanding palette of immunotherapies and their wider clinical translation, together with a selection of relevant primary research articles from Nature Cancer.

See our June Editorial the Review article by Sanmamed et al. and the Viewpoint by Anagnostou et al.

CDH17-directed CAR T cells for solid tumors

CAR T cells developed to target Cadherin-17 (CDH17) eradicate neuroendocrine and gastrointestinal tumors in preclinical models, yet show no toxicity to normal tissues that also express CDH17.

See Feng et al.

Overcoming drug resistance in mutant EGFR lung cancer

A mutant-selective allosteric EGFR inhibitor overcomes drug resistance in mutant EGFR lung cancer.

See To et al.and the accompanying News & Views article by Marasco and Misale

Cis-acting bi-specific antibodies for immunotherapy

Bi-specific antibodies to CD40 developed to target dendritic cell subsets for cancer immunotherapy improve the therapeutic window and reduce toxicities, compared with traditional CD40 agonists.

See Salomon et al.

The balancing act of tissue repair and cancer

Tissue regenerative programs triggered by radiation are orchestrated by infiltrating neutrophils and enhance metastatic growth.

See Nolan et al.See also related News & Views article byGranot & Heinberg

Temporal dynamics of T cells following PD-1 blockade

Single-cell sequencing reveals temporal changes in tumor-infiltrating T cell populations before and after immune checkpoint blockade. Patients responding to treatment display accumulation of CXCL13+ precursor exhausted T cells.

See Liu et al.