Cancer research highlights from Molecular Oncology

As we move forward into year 2022, and in preparation for the World Cancer Day, we have reviewed the Molecular Oncology content and selected some Research Articles, Review Articles and Policy Papers that we think highlight well interesting concepts in cancer research over the last year.
Cancer research highlights from Molecular Oncology
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Cancer research as a continuum

We view cancer research as a continuum, where basic research, translational approaches, clinical studies, and outcomes research are intercalated to achieve optimal results for cancer diagnostics, treatment and care. The Policy Paper by Ringborg, Berns, Celis, Heitor et al. crystallise the latest discussions on European Cancer Research Policy and provide a coherent view of this cancer research continuum and how it can be further structured to immediately benefit patients and the society.

 Basic cancer research feeding back to drug development and treatment combinations

Progress often comes from disruptive thinking in the context of basic research. In their review article, Matheus Henrique Dias and René Bernards have put forward the counter-intuitive hypothesis that activation of mitogenic signaling in cancer cells might hold therapeutic potential through selective sensitization to drugs targeting stress response pathways. Stress responses often include the activation of a cellular senescence programme, a cellular state involving proliferation arrest, and  Daniel Muñoz-Espín and colleagues have reviewed senescence under the prism of early detection of cancer and/or therapy responses.

Naturally, targeting of cancer-associated signalling pathways should not be overlooked as an approach for cancer diagnostics and treatment. Antonia Schubert and Michael Boutros have reviewed how extracellular vesicles (EVs) are involved in cancer-associated signalling and can be potentially harnessed to treat cancer. Moreover, diverse research articles published in Molecular Oncology last year shed light onto various aspects of cancer signalling and metabolic pathways and their targeting for cancer treatment:

 Zooming out to get the patient picture

Moving further away from basic research, Davide Cirillo et al. have reviewed the applications of artificial intelligence over a landscape of heterogeneously granular cancer research data, combining the results from large-scale omics studies, imaging data and healthcare registries.

 Moreover, large-scale analyses have revealed actionable profiles in cancer patients:

 Finally, in a Systematic Review, Raymond Henderson et al. stress the importance of health economics data for translating cancer research into clinical practice; while indicating that precision diagnostic testing for precision medicine approaches holds economic value for the care of patients with NSCLC, the authors recommend more robust health economics evaluation in the routine of clinical trial planning, as such analyses may further reveal a benefit of the otherwise costly precision medicine approaches.

You may access our collection of highlighted articles also here: https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1002/(ISSN)1878-0261.2021-Highlights.

Would your own research fit well within this collection? Then we encourage you to submit your manuscript to our journal.

 

Cover image from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/de/illustrations/dna-wendel-kurve-wissenschaft-869110/

 

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