An older woman receiving treatment for breast cancer sits at home wondering whether to call her physician and go into the hospital. She’s on a new dose of a drug which she hasn’t had before and is struggling with nausea. Not unusual for a person with cancer on treatment, but it’s been days now and she’s getting increasingly fed up and struggling to eat enough. She gets a notification on her phone to fill in her daily symptom reporting survey and does so, truthfully reporting her symptoms. At her oncology department in the nearest major city, some 200 kilometres away, a clinician gets a ‘ping ..read more

A combination of existing drugs may inhibit development of bone metastasis in breast cancer patients. The study published in Cancer Discovery, 1 March, found that a combined treatment strategy that activates T cells while at the same time targeting cells inhibiting T cells could prevent metastases from breast cancer forming in the bones. “Our study maps the dynamic changes in the bone microenvironment during BC [breast cancer] bone metastasis and uncovers a key crosstalk …that facilitates the formation of an immunosuppressive and growth-permissive metastatic niche,” write the authors. The adva ..read more

Accelerated ageing is more common in recent birth cohorts and associated with increased incidence of early-onset solid tumours. The study, abstract 846, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting, held April 5–10, in San Diego, found that each standard deviation increase in accelerated ageing – defined according to a set of prospectively gathered biomarkers – was associated with a 42% increased risk of early-onset lung cancer, 22% increased risk of early-onset gastrointestinal cancer, and a 36% increased risk of early-onset uterine cancers. “By examining th ..read more

It all started with a high school friendship. Anna Szołucha, a photographer who specialises in noir-style black-and-white female nudes, read a post by her high school friend Agnieszka Ford on social media. Agnieszka wrote that she was in a medical consultation for breast reconstruction. “It was an impulse,” recalls Szołucha. “I wrote to her and said that, after the surgery I would do a photo shoot for her with my professional partner Małgorzata Lakowska.” She didn’t have to wait long for Agnieszka’s response: “Let’s do this now.” “I didn’t hesitate for a moment,” recalls Agnieszka Ford, who im ..read more

PHILADELPHIA – The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) presented the 2024 AACR Distinguished Public Service Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research to Franco Cavalli, MD, and the 2024 AACR Distinguished Public Service Award posthumously to Worta McCaskill-Stevens, MD, at the AACR Annual Meeting 2024. Franco Cavalli, MD is president of the Foundation for the Institute of Oncology Research, which manages the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR) located in Bellinzona, Switzerland; the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma (ICML); and the International Extranodal Lym ..read more

Secondhand smoke significantly reduced the ability of chemotherapy to kill head and neck cancer cells and increased the cells’ ability to reproduce. The study, published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, found that secondhand smoke altered the proteins that carry cisplatin into cancer cells. “These findings emphasise the urgent need for clinicians to consider the potential role of SHS [secondhand smoke] on treatment outcomes and to advise cancer patients and caregivers on the potential benefits of avoiding SHS exposure,” write the authors, led by Lurdes Queimado, from the Uni ..read more

All patients with metastatic breast cancer should have equal access to the best treatments and outcomes regardless of where they live in Europe. The EBCC14 manifesto, agreed at the 14th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC) on March 22 in Milan, considered recommendations to address metastatic breast cancer issues around stigma, registries and real-world data, multidisciplinary care, clinical research, quality indicators, and returning to the workplace. “There are disparities not only across Europe but within countries regarding access to multidisciplinary quality care, information, and inn ..read more

The Cancer Grand Challenges initiative has announced the five global research teams who between them will receive $125 million to address unanswered questions. The winning teams, revealed in March, are addressing four major oncology challenges – solid tumours in children, T-cell receptors, early onset cancers, and cancer inequalities. “Some of these challenge areas have been massively under-investigated. Now it’s time for the teams addressing these challenges to shine and bring the full power of the global team science to bear on the work that lies ahead,” says David Lane, chair of the Cancer ..read more

Survivors of childhood cancer are at a significantly higher risk of death following a major cardiovascular event than the general public. The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology 27 February, found risk of death after a major cardiovascular event in a 30-year-old who had previously been treated for cancer as a child was equivalent to that in a 50-year-old in the general population. “Untreated risk factors have a larger impact on risk for death following a serious heart event among survivors of childhood cancer relative to the general population, and therefore w ..read more

Involving patients as equal partners in choosing between treatment options is particularly important when there is considerable uncertainty about how the options could affect their survival and quality of life. Such is often the case in treating older patients, who tend to be more frail and have more comorbid health problems than the highly selective group of patients on whom the treatment options will have been trialled. Yet it is precisely in this older patient population that efforts to move towards a more shared approach to decision making are having least impact. Siri Rostoft, a specialis ..read more