Comment in 2024

In this Comment, Ben-Aharon et al. advocate for the creation of designated OncoYoung programs to address the unique needs of individuals with early-onset cancer, as well as multinational platforms with dedicated funding to investigate the aetiology of this disease and to develop preventive measures.

In this Comment, Connor et al. discuss how the continued poor clinical translatability of preclinical studies highlights the need to mandate well-characterized models, ideally established in the orthotopic setting and, where feasible, treated with classical standard-of-care regimens.

CRISPR screens in cell cultures reveal cancer dependencies yet often miss the metabolic nuances of tissues. In this Comment, Zuber and Palm highlight how modelling tumour-specific metabolic conditions can enhance our understanding of cancer biology and improve therapeutic discovery.

The World Trade Center (WTC) disaster exposed individuals to carcinogens, leading to elevated cancer rates. Responders who received care through the WTC Health Program have higher survival rates. Twenty-three years post-disaster, we summarize cancer incidence and outcome studies in this population and highlight the importance of a dedicated health programme response.

Cancer screening, diagnosis and care can benefit greatly from advances in artificial intelligence (AI). In this Comment, Ghassemi and Gusev discuss how AI applications must address and avoid known racial and gender biases to improve health care for all.

Integrative medicine incorporated alongside cancer care, referred to as integrative oncology, is an evidence-informed field with established clinical guidelines. Although integrative oncology improves patient outcomes, it is inconsistently provided to patients. To align with best practices, it is necessary to increase awareness of integrative oncology, improve access to treatments, and provide consistent financial healthcare coverage.

Sex matters in metastasis, but it has received little attention in research. Here, we highlight the emerging and important roles of biological sex in metastasis and advocate for mechanistic and quantitative studies for the future development of sex-tailored therapies.

The practice of posting preprint manuscripts on servers such as bioRxiv has become increasingly common. In this Comment, Hindle and Sever explore the utility of preprints for advancing researchers careers.

The ability of prenatal cell-free DNA sequencing to incidentally detect occult maternal malignancies was first documented over a decade ago, yet coordinated follow-up of pregnant people who receive these results is still lacking in many countries. Here we provide a call to action for oncologists to become more involved in diagnosing and managing these cases.

Generalist medical artificial intelligence (GMAI) models are gaining momentum in their applications for cancer treatment. In this Comment, Gilbert and Kather advocate for novel regulation of GMAI approaches to ensure patient safety and adequate physician support.

Metastatic cancer represents the main cause of death in patients with cancer, but metastasis research is hindered by the limited availability of metastatic samples. In this Comment, Desmedt and Carey highlight the opportunities and challenges of post-mortem tissue donation programmes, which represent a complementary and attractive solution to overcome many of the hurdles in metastasis research.