Cancer

A rodent that doesn’t age like other animals, barely gets cancer and stays fertile for decades.

Every human cell contains ancient stretches of DNA that originated from viruses. In youth, they are kept silent.

Why does the immune system of older people respond less well to cancer therapies?

Alcohol raises the risk of seven types of cancer, even at low levels of consumption. There is no safe lower limit. Here is…

Men age faster than women. New research offers a concrete mechanism: they lose a crucial type of immune cell earlier in life.

Cancer cells are not just abnormal: they carry fundamentally more DNA damage than normal cells. And that difference may be a…

Cancer survivors age faster at the cellular level. New data from a randomised trial suggest that regular exercise slows that…

The thymus produces T cells, the immune cells that protect us against infections and cancer.

The protein p53 is best known for suppressing tumors. But what happens when it is lost in healthy tissue?

You do not need to turn red to sustain DNA damage from the sun.

Colorectal cancer does not metastasize at random. New research shows that a fatty molecule inside the cell plays a critical…

Tumors have a strategy to keep the immune system out: they surround themselves with senescent cells that block immune access.

A blood test that screens for more than fifty types of cancer simultaneously has cleared a key FDA advisory committee. Ten…

Lung cancer increasingly affects people who have never smoked. Scientists have been searching for the reasons for years.

People who are forty today appear biologically older than forty-year-olds were a generation ago. That is not a marketing claim.

Inflammation is generally seen as protection. But in cancer, it can flip into its opposite. New research shows how a chronic…

Healthy fat cells surrounding breast tumours are not passive bystanders. They secrete substances that can kill cancer cells…

Colorectal cancer cells divide faster when a single inhibitory protein is removed.

Cells can be killed by too much free iron. This form of cell death is called ferroptosis.

Children who receive platinum-based chemotherapy may carry lasting DNA damage in their liver cells. A new study shows that the…

After treatment for cervical cancer, the key question is whether the disease will return. A blood test based on freely…

Cancer cells are resourceful. They do not just compete for space and nutrients; they also hijack the molecular signals that…

Cancer cells protect themselves by disarming the immune cells sent to destroy them. They do it using an unexpected tool:…

A common but poorly addressed side effect of chemotherapy is lasting nerve damage in the hands and feet.

The mRNA platform that powered Covid vaccines is now being used against cancer. Promising results in advanced melanoma are…

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers. A new drug has nearly doubled median survival compared to standard…

Four lifestyle factors do the most to lower your cancer risk: not smoking, limiting alcohol, maintaining a healthy weight, and…

A class of drugs already used in breast cancer treatment may also act on a core mechanism of biological aging. Not by…

A vaccine built specifically for one person, based on that person’s tumor DNA, has shown impressive results in a large…

A vaccine built specifically around each patient’s tumor works. That sounds almost too good to be true, but a large randomized…

A new oral treatment for an aggressive blood cancer has been approved by US regulators.

The thymus shrinks after your twenties and gradually loses its function. But a hormone it produces, thymulin, remains active…

Senescent cells and cancer cells seem like opposites. But they share a key survival trick. A new drug combination exploits…

Why does the same cancer-causing mutation form a tumor in one tissue but not in another? Researchers found that the physical…

Skin cancer is often thought to begin in surface skin cells damaged by the sun or chemicals.

Cancer cells in a poorly perfused tumor receive too few building blocks. That deprivation makes them surprisingly vulnerable…

Immune cells that ‘exhaust’ do not fail because they are broken. They switch to an energy-conserving mode. That distinction…

Immune cells tasked with attacking tumours burn out before completing the job. New research points to an energy deficit as the…

How does cancer spread through the body? New research maps for the first time how tumours reshape their surroundings as they…

Two widely used cancer medicines are difficult to produce and depend on a rare plant species. Researchers have now found a way…

Breast cancer affects older women more often and behaves differently than in younger women.

A hormone produced by the thymus keeps inflammation under control. But as we age, the thymus shrinks and produces less of it.

Your immune system does far more than fight infections. It maintains tissues, clears damaged cells and keeps cancer in check.

Colorectal cancer has long been seen as a disease of older age. But younger adults are increasingly being diagnosed, often too…

The body sometimes builds its own immune outposts near tumours. Whether those structures hold together and remain effective…

A signaling pathway that helps breast cancer grow also strengthens the immune response against the tumor. That paradoxical…

How do immune cells kill a cancer cell? And how fast does it happen?

The immune system has dedicated cells that detect and destroy cancer. But sometimes they don’t work as well as they should.

Most drugs work by blocking a single protein. But a special class of molecules, called molecular glues, works differently.

In childhood cancer, predicting who responds well to treatment and who does not is critical.

Cancer patients often lose muscle and body weight rapidly, even when they are eating.

Many cancer patients lose dramatic amounts of weight, not because they refuse to eat, but because their body actively…

The drinks industry channelled millions into health organisations and influenced the public message about alcohol and cancer…

Younger generations are biologically older than their parents were at the same age.

Cells continuously measure how much oxygen is available. That turns out to matter not just during oxygen shortage, but also…

Your immune system ages. It becomes slower, chronically inflamed, and less effective at fighting infection and cancer.

People with a specific eye condition turn out to have a higher risk of cancer. At first glance that looks like coincidence.

The immune system can attack cancer in a way researchers long overlooked: by damaging the blood vessels that feed a tumor.…

Cancer is not only a disease of faulty genes. It is also a disease of a rearranged genome.

In bowel cancer, senescent cells in the surrounding tissue help tumours grow new blood vessels. That makes certain tumours…

Mutations typically linked to blood cancer also appear to play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. That unexpected finding could…

Large cells die differently from small ones. In a specific form of cell death driven by iron and fat oxidation, bigger cells…

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers. Average survival after diagnosis is measured in months, not years. A new…

A blood test that screens for multiple cancers at once sounded like a turning point. A large randomised trial in the UK tells…

Most cells carrying cancer mutations never become tumors. But a small number actively remodel their surroundings to build a…

Most mutated cells never become tumors. The ones that do have a trick: they remodel the tissue around them to create a safe…

People with certain cancer-linked gene mutations sometimes respond better to immunotherapy. New research explains why: faults…

Organised clusters of immune cells inside tumours follow the same structural pattern across dozens of cancer types. That is…

A protein best known for helping other proteins fold correctly turns out to play an unexpected role in the cellular response…

CRISPR normally works on DNA. A new system targets RNA instead, and can kill specific cells on demand.

A protein best known from cancer research turns out to play a key role in brain aging.

Cancer immunotherapy only works for a minority of patients. The reason: many tumors leave the immune system cold. A new mRNA…

Many antiviral and cancer drugs are built on nucleosides: small molecules that resemble the building blocks of DNA and RNA.

Most cancer immunotherapies work only for a minority of patients. A new mRNA treatment drastically increased immune responses…

Metformin has been the most prescribed type 2 diabetes drug for decades. New research now shows it also inhibits cancer cells…

Tumors damage surrounding tissue. That has long been known. But a new study shows they also actively block the renewal of…

Obesity raises the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The link has been suspected for years, but the underlying biology was murky. A…

Scientists have engineered nanoparticles capable of activating an immune response across the entire body simultaneously, not…

When a key energy-producing protein is reduced in cancer cells, the tumors don’t slow down, they accelerate. New research…

A protein that normally powers every cell in your body does something surprising in cancer cells: when it becomes less active,…

Lung fibrosis replaces healthy tissue with scar tissue, makes breathing progressively harder, and has almost no treatments…

Every cell in the body follows a tightly regulated cycle of growth and division. When that regulation breaks down, cancer follows.

Early cancer detection through a blood test, the so-called liquid biopsy, is one of the most promising developments in…

Fusobacterium nucleatum is a bacterium that normally lives in your mouth but is also found deep inside tumors. Scientists have…

In a mouse model of spinal disc degeneration, a cheap, decades-old drug combination beat a newer and more expensive competitor.

Air pollution has long been linked to heart disease, lung damage, and cancer.

Cancer cells have a way of making themselves invisible to the immune system’s hunters.

Cancer cells that reach the heart barely grow at all. Researchers have now discovered that the mechanical force of a beating…

Cancer cells deploy a molecular trick to conceal themselves from the immune system.

Tumor cells that reach the heart barely grow at all. Researchers have found that the mechanical load of the beating heart…

A drug used for decades to treat a rare blood cancer turns out to also clear senescent cells, the so-called zombie cells…

The same technique that has transformed cancer treatment, reprogramming immune cells to hunt down disease, is now being aimed…

Blood cancer cells cloak themselves in a layer of sugar molecules that tells the immune system to stand down.

Cancer cells are skilled escape artists. But leukemia cells have a particularly elegant trick: they coat themselves in sugar…

Researchers have found that two genes that normally put a brake on cell growth are lost in many cancers, and that their loss…

CAR T-cell therapy transformed blood cancer treatment. But for solid tumors, the most common cancers, it has largely failed.

CAR T-cell therapy has saved lives in blood cancers. But in solid tumors, the most common forms of cancer, it has barely made…

Older people are more likely to see their cancer spread to other organs.

Mitochondria have long been known as the cell’s energy generators.

Half of our DNA consists of genetic elements that can copy and paste themselves into new locations.

Our genome harbors stretches of DNA that can copy and relocate themselves, and researchers have now shown that two such…

Cancer treatment has traditionally meant attacking from the outside: chemotherapy, radiation, surgery. An emerging strategy…

Not all immune cells are created equal in the fight against cancer.

Cancer cells produce chemical compounds that healthy cells do not. Researchers have now reprogrammed immune cells to detect…

A study of 527 women has mapped how breast tissue changes with age in unprecedented spatial detail: cell density drops,…

A study of 527 women shows that as breast tissue ages, it doesn't just shrink; it also becomes richer in immune cells and more…

Cancer cells leak specific metabolites, chemical byproducts of their abnormally high energy use. Researchers have now…

More than five hundred breast tissue samples examined up close, with a striking finding: aging here is not a smooth, linear…

CAR T-cell therapy is one of the most powerful tools oncology has produced in decades, but its complexity and cost put it out…

CAR T-cell therapy is one of the most promising weapons against cancer, but producing it is slow, expensive and fiendishly…

Researchers have developed an ingenious CRISPR technique that generates CAR T cells directly inside the body, bypassing the…

The hunt for safe senolytics, drugs that selectively eliminate aged, dysfunctional cells, has largely focused on repurposed…

CAR T-cell therapy is one of the most powerful tools oncology has produced in decades, but its complexity and cost put it out…