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In this Perspective article, Mel Greaves and co-workers outline emerging evidence that suggests that children with newly diagnosed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia may have a delayed maturation of the gut microbiome compared with healthy children, a deficit that might be associated with early-life epidemiological factors and could contribute to the risk of transformation of preleukaemic clones in response to common infectious triggers.
In this Perspective, the authors suggest that different tumour microenvironments have ‘archetypal’ qualities across all cancers — characteristic and repeating collections of cells and gene-expression profiles at the level of the bulk tumour. They propose the existence of 12 dominant immune archetypes.
Eukaryotic initiation factor 4F (eIF4F) controls the translation of a subset of transcripts that include those encoding oncogenic proteins. In this Perspective article, Bartish et al. discuss the implications of targeting eIF4F on immune and stromal cells in the tumour microenvironment. In addition to discussing data from cancer models, the authors incorporate extensive data from non-cancer contexts to identify potential desirable or unwanted effects of eIF4F inhibition in these cells.
In this Perspective, Magnon and Hondermarck introduce the emerging field of cancer neuroscience and outline how the bidirectional crosstalk between the brain and peripheral tumours drives cancer development and progression.
Fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma is a rare cancer type and, as such, research into this disease comes with many challenges. In this Perspective, Sanford Simon tells of his personal journey and experiences in the fight against this rare cancer type.
In this Perspective, Tsoumakidou explores the emerging role of cancer-associated fibroblasts as positive regulators of the adaptive immune system in cancer.
Clinical correlative data and a plethora of preclinical studies of cancers have shown that both tumour-associated and metastasis-associated macrophages play an important role in promoting cancer. In this Perspective article, Cassetta and Pollard chronologically explore the evolution of our understanding of tumour-associated macrophage biology and enabling technologies.
