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Agents of Mutation: Pathogens as Catalysts of Carcinogenesis
Cancer has traditionally been viewed as a non-communicable disease—one driven by genetic predisposition, environmental exposure, and lifestyle factors. Yet a substantial and increasingly compelling body of epidemiological research has shown that a significant proportion of cancers are caused by infectious…
It’s no longer taboo to suggest that some metastatic breast cancers may be curable
It’s long been clear that, in most patients with metastatic HER-positive breast cancer, adding effective HER2 blockade to cytotoxics can result in very prolonged responses. Janet Fricker reports on the prospective trials building evidence on whether – and in whom…
Sleep & Cancer: Why Rest Matters More Than You Think?
Difficulty sleeping and disturbed sleep patterns are not uncommon among cancer patients, and alleviating these symptoms has always been integral to good cancer care. Now, mounting evidence of the impact that getting enough deep sleep can have on outcomes in…
Molecular tumour boards: translating data into tailored therapeutics
Developments in molecular diagnostics are allowing us to capture an extraordinarily detailed picture of the genomic and other molecular changes that characterise a given tumour specimen. But making best use of the information at our disposal is proving quite a…
Sri Lanka cancer care hit by foreign currency crisis
A shortage of essential cancer drugs caused by financial crisis is threatening to dampen Sri Lanka’s success in treating cancer as part of a free health service. The country is facing its worst economic crisis since 1948, with huge foreign…
The sunshine hormone: the many wonders of vitamin D
Vitamin D has drawn much scientific interest and media coverage in recent years, and increasingly so in 2020, when a link was found between vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19. This is a very unusual vitamin, in that it behaves both…
Guiding career paths from trainee doctor to oncology leader
“If you want to be an oncologist you have to go through some struggles. First become a medical doctor and then enter a residents’ training in internal medicine and then medical oncology. If you want to do more, you have…
Contagion: a narrative approach to understanding the psychological and social impact of the pandemic
‘Contagion’ seems like an outdated word in medicine. Transmissible illnesses are no longer described as ‘contagious’, they are ‘infectious’, and we study ‘infective’ agents. Contagion is a term evocative of the medical past. Talking and writing about contagion evokes the…
Cancer and COVID-19 took the stage at AACR Annual Meeting
It was not scheduled in the original scientific program, but as the new coronavirus pandemic has started spreading all over the world, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) dedicated a plenary session of its Annual Meeting to this very…