Volume 24 Issue 5, May 2024

Metastatic cancer represents the main cause of death in patients with cancer, but metastasis research is hindered by the limited availability of metastatic samples. In this Comment, Desmedt and Carey highlight the opportunities and challenges of post-mortem tissue donation programmes, which represent a complementary and attractive solution to overcome many of the hurdles in metastasis research.

Sánchez-Guixé et al. investigated the possible routes to second malignancies in survivors of paediatric cancer by studying four such clinical cases.

In a recent study published in Nature, Goto et al. explore mechanisms of immune evasion in early colorectal cancers and adenomas and identify SOX17 to be crucial for immune escape through suppression of interferon-γ signalling.

In this recent study, He et al. establish that chronic stress promotes metastasis through stress-induced formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs).

In this Viewpoint article, we asked three scientists working on the cancer mycobiome to provide their opinions on advancements and challenges and what the future holds for this exciting field of cancer research.

In this Review, Meier et al. discuss the molecular mechanisms of necroptosis, delineate how this form of immunogenic cell death activates antitumour immune responses and explore the opportunities and limitations of targeting necroptosis for anticancer therapy.

In this Review, Cichowski and colleagues provide an overview of combinatorial strategies designed to treat RAS-driven cancers that are based on four concepts that include vertical pathway inhibition, co-targeting RAS and adaptive survival pathways, co-targeting downstream or converging pathways and capitalizing on other cancer-associated vulnerabilities.

Sex differences impact various non-reproductive organ cancers, often leading to higher cancer incidence and poorer outcomes in male individuals. In this Perspective article, Xiao, Lee et al. outline the biological factors contributing to sex bias in immuno-oncology, emphasizing the need for future research to offer a fuller understanding of sex disparities in cancer.