Tumor

Immunotherapy is a promising treatment for cancer, but it still has its problems. Now researchers have identified a “jamming signal” that cancer uses to hide from the immune system, and engineered a synthetic immune cell that can fight back.

How cancer develops is a complex puzzle, involving untold moving parts and chemical reactions. Now, scientists have found how two of these pieces work together to prevent cancer forming, which could unlock new types of cancer treatments.

A new study has shown that an experimental class of cancer drugs has wider potential than previously thought. Researchers have found a new type of BET inhibitor that, in mouse tests, can target solid tumors more effectively and safely than others.

Doctors fight cancer with everything from radiation to chemicals to light-reactive particles, with mixed outcomes. Now, a new study has combined two approaches – chemotherapy and light therapy – into one drug, with promising results.

A team of researchers is proposing a radical new technique for killing cancer cells using low-intensity ultrasound waves. The work is still at an early stage but cell tests have shown sound waves can destroy cancer while leaving healthy cells intact.

As promising as immunotherapy is against cancer, these therapies aren’t entirely without risk. But now scientists have developed an emergency brake drug that can switch off the treatment if it begins to spiral out of control.

Fighting cancer can sometimes feel like a game of Whack-A-Mole – even after a primary tumor is removed the disease can crop up again in other organs. Now, researchers have developed a drug that can prevent cancer from spreading.

Radiation therapy is currently our best shot at treating cancer, but healthy cells often become unfortunate collateral damage. New research shows how the treatment can be made safer by reducing the time involved from weeks to seconds.

Cancer has a knack for deceiving the immune system, giving itself time to grow and spread. Now, researchers at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute have identified one way it does so, and found a method to counter it in mouse tests.

Sometimes to fight one villain, you have to team up with another. It works in movies – and now, medical science. Researchers have turned to anthrax as an unlikely ally in the fight against bladder cancer, with promising results in animal tests.

Researchers from the University of Michigan have developed cancer traps that can be implanted just below the skin. In mouse tests, these traps caught biomarkers that can tell doctors if cancer is present, if it’s spreading or if it’s preparing to.

One of the most promising types of cancer treatment involves boosting the immune system’s response to the presence of cancer, and now two new mouse studies out of Yale University are reporting breakthroughs in this area.