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This Perspective explores the connection between copper and cancer and how challenges in the field could be addressed, and is a synthesis of discussions from the Copper Cancer Consortium, a meeting of experts in the field that took place in March 2020.
This Perspective proposes that data from multiple modalities, including molecular diagnostics, radiological and histological imaging and codified clinical data, should be integrated by multimodal machine learning models to advance the prognosis and treatment management of patients with cancer.
This Perspective discusses the main themes in cancer metabolism research that are currently under investigation in the context of in vivo tumour metabolism, specifically emphasizing emerging aspects and questions that remain unanswered.
Collective cancer cell invasion with leader–follower organization is a key mechanism of metastasis, but a consensus definition of leader cell characteristics is lacking. This Perspective outlines a conceptual framework for understanding how leader cells coordinate the invasion process using a multitude of cellular and molecular programmes.
This Perspective highlights the importance of protein–protein interactions for the oncogenic functions of MYC and discusses how the MYC protein interactome might be exploited therapeutically.
This Perspective discusses the signalling programmes and biological factors that simultaneously induce cancer stem cells and reprogramme the immune response to facilitate tumour immune evasion. It also highlights therapeutic opportunities for simultaneous targeting of the cancer stem cell niche and immunosurveillance.
Disseminated leukaemia cells share many characteristics with metastasizing solid tumour cells. This Perspective discusses the key molecular processes that facilitate leukaemia metastasis, drawing comparisons with leukocyte trafficking and features of solid tumour invasion. Current and future strategies to target leukaemia metastasis are also discussed.
This Perspective highlights the evidence from basic and translational research that genetic sex influences multiple factors that can contribute to cancer development and treatment responses, and suggests that including genetic sex considerations in treatments for patients with cancer will improve outcomes.
This Perspective outlines the connections of epithelial–mesenchymal transition programmes to the stem cell state in both normal and cancer stem cells and discusses emerging concepts related to the heterogeneous and plastic cell states generated by an epithelial–mesenchymal transition that influence our understanding of cancer stem cell biology and cancer metastasis.
The number of publications on deep learning for cancer diagnostics is rapidly increasing, but clinical translation is slow. This Perspective advocates performance estimation in external cohorts and strongly advises that a primary analysis is predefined in a standardized protocol preferentially stored in an online repository.