Browse Articles

Various strategies have been proposed and implemented to target the tumour vasculature, which supports tumour growth and progression. However, to date they have had variable success. Guelfi et al. describe some of these approaches and discuss how our increased understanding of the interactions between tumour vessels and the immune compartment could help generate combination therapies that provide durable responses in patients with cancer.

Cancer screening, diagnosis and care can benefit greatly from advances in artificial intelligence (AI). In this Comment, Ghassemi and Gusev discuss how AI applications must address and avoid known racial and gender biases to improve health care for all.

Inflammation is well established as a risk factor for cancer development in the gut. In this study, Fesneau et al. identify a specific immune cell population, derived from T helper 17 (T_H17) cells, that can initiate intestinal cancer.

Integrative medicine incorporated alongside cancer care, referred to as integrative oncology, is an evidence-informed field with established clinical guidelines. Although integrative oncology improves patient outcomes, it is inconsistently provided to patients. To align with best practices, it is necessary to increase awareness of integrative oncology, improve access to treatments, and provide consistent financial healthcare coverage.

In this Journal Club, Koh and Im discuss a study demonstrating the unique evolutionary trajectory of breast cancers harbouring the common driver alteration der(1;16).

Transient ectopic lymphoid structures known as tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) have been observed in many solid tumour types. In this Review, Teillaud et al. discuss how these TLS potentially orchestrate immune responses against tumours locally and are positively associated with prognosis and response to immune checkpoint inhibitors. The authors also outline how preclinical studies are highlighting the potential to manipulate the formation and function of TLS as a novel form of immunotherapy.

In a recent study published in Nature, lactate has been identified as a key player in enhancing DNA repair mechanisms in gastric cancer by promoting lactylation of DNA repair proteins, leading to chemotherapy resistance.

Pregnancy involves immune system suppression to protect the fetus, making it a valuable model for understanding cancer immune tolerance. Recently in Cell, Yu et al. identified B7-H4 as a common immune tolerance checkpoint in both tumours and the placenta.

This poster explores rational combinations of immune checkpoint blockade of the PD1–PDL1 interaction with other therapies aimed at targeting effector T cells, innate immune and regulatory cells, the tumour microenvironment and cancer cells.

Circular RNAs, once considered by-products of splicing errors, are now accepted as key players in cancer biology. In this Review, Conn et al. review the functional interactome of circular RNAs in cancer, highlighting their contribution to oncogenesis, their potential as biomarkers and the prospect of leveraging them for novel therapeutics.

Leighow et al. develop a strategy called the dual-switch selection gene drive platform, which enables the evolutionary dynamics of acquired resistance to be manipulated for therapeutic ends.

Adoptive cell therapies have emerged as promising approaches for the treatment of patients with cancer. Engineering cell therapies to confer resistance to small-molecule therapies, chemotherapies and antibody-based therapies will improve their utility and success. Here, Wellhausen, Baek and colleagues outline the key principles of engineering resistance and potential applications for haematopoietic stem cell transplantation and allogeneic immune cell therapies.

Sex matters in metastasis, but it has received little attention in research. Here, we highlight the emerging and important roles of biological sex in metastasis and advocate for mechanistic and quantitative studies for the future development of sex-tailored therapies.

In this Journal Club, Maeng and Ku discuss a study demonstrating that profiling drug responses in patient-derived organoids can identify responders to various therapies.

Despite the success of immune-checkpoint inhibitors, many patients are at risk of developing immune-related adverse events. One of these is myocarditis or inflammation of the heart. Munir, Gutierrez and colleagues describe the data from preclinical models and patient samples, which have begun to provide a mechanistic understanding of myocarditis resulting from immune-checkpoint inhibitors, and present suggestions for improving both the diagnosis and treatment of patients experiencing this immune-related toxicity.

In this Review, Polak, Zhang and Kuo discuss the currently available and rapidly evolving 3D tumour organoid models that capture the tumour immune microenvironment. They highlight opportunities for organoid-based investigations of tumour immunity, drug development and precision medicine.

Lim et al. show that ASS1, silenced in many cancer types, is a metabolic checkpoint that, following DNA damage, halts cell cycle progression by restricting nucleotide synthesis and p53-related gene transcription.

In this Review, Harris et al. summarize the dynamic changes of the immune breast tumour microenvironment (TME) that take place during disease progression and in response to treatment, and outline emerging therapies to target the immune TME in patients with breast cancer.