Researchers have identified checkpoint inhibitor resistance mechanisms in many solid tumour cancers, including melanoma, lung cancer and breast cancer.

An engineered virus kills cancer cells more effectively than another virus currently used in treatments, according to Hokkaido University researchers. The virus, called dl355, has an even stronger anticancer effect than another engineered virus currently used in clinical practice

Chemotherapy and radiation are effective cancer treatments because they kill rapidly dividing cells, including tumour cells. But for children, whose tiny bodies are still growing – these treatments can cause lifelong damage. Now, scientists have reported that a targeted therapy that blocks a protein called LSD1 was able to shrink tumours in mice with a form of pediatric brain cancer known as medulloblastoma.

Cancer of the oesophagus claims more than 400,000 lives around the world each year. With no efficient, reliable method of screening for the disease, by the time symptoms become apparent, it’s often too late to save the patient.

Scientists have identified genetic changes that may predict the likelihood of breast cancer relapse in women taking a common type of hormone therapy.

The world’s first genetic sequencing of precancerous lung lesions could pave the way for very early detection and new treatments, reports a new study led by UCL researchers.

Immune cells called macrophages are supposed to serve and protect, but cancer has found ways to put them to sleep. Now researchers at the Abramson Cancer Centre of the University of Pennsylvania say they’ve identified how to fuel macrophages with the energy needed to attack and eat cancer cells.

Immunotherapy’s promise in the fight against cancer drew international attention after two scientists won a Nobel Prize this year for unleashing the ability of the immune system to eliminate tumour cells.

Cancers most commonly arise because of a series of two to five mutations in different genes that combine to cause a tumour. Evidence from a growing number of experiments focused on truncal mutations – the first mutations in a given sequence–suggests a new direction in understanding the origins of cancer.

A study by UCLA researchers is the first to demonstrate a technique for coaxing pluripotent stem cells – which can give rise to every cell type in the body and which can be grown indefinitely in the lab – into becoming mature T cells capable of killing tumour cells.