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Global Burden of Disease estimates show that between 1990 and 2023, the prevalence and burden of drug use disorders, inclusive of amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine and opioid use, have been increasing in high-income countries, particularly in the USA.

Symmetry breaking is key to tissue formation. Now it is shown that symmetry breaking of epithelial spheroids is controlled by an interplay of collective migration with curvature and matrix remodelling.

Respiration enhances cerebrospinal fluid flow through mechanical and autonomic pathways. Inhale length and diaphragm motion influence its displacement and net flow, identifying a modifiable, noninvasive mechanism relevant to brain homeostasis.

Kwang-Woon Lee and colleagues present an innovative algorithmic enhancement that enables faster and more efficient TCAD device simulations. This breakthrough enables more efficient simulations of advanced semiconductor technologies and large-scale design.

Solid-state spatio-spectral coherent light detection and ranging system is proposed based on flutter-wavelength-swept laser for real-time four-dimensional coherent imaging over extended measurable distance even in challenging environments.

Sensorineureal hearing loss is a form of deafness when sensory cells cannot sense vibrations. Here the authors design a piezo-ionotropic polymer for multi-resonance acoustic sensing, driven by ion hitching-in cage effect.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

Analyses of 2,658 whole genomes across 38 types of cancer identify the contribution of non-coding point mutations and structural variants to driving cancer.

Helium is an atom of great scientific interest, yet much debate exists surrounding the shape its molecules form. Here Voigtsberger et al. present experimental results imaging the wavefuction of ⁴He₃ and ³He₄He₂ trimer systems, which suggest that ⁴He₃ is a random cloud while ³He₄He₂is a quantum halo state.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

Here the authors provide an explanation for 95% of examined predicted loss of function variants found in disease-associated haploinsufficient genes in the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD), underscoring the power of the presented analysis to minimize false assignments of disease risk.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

The authors present plasmonic metasurfaces that combine vivid structural coloration with hidden stochastic scattering. Their quasiorder enables optical camouflage, concealing unclonable PUF keys within the background for secure, invisible authentication.

Rutz and colleagues report STK40, a non-catalytic member of the Tribbles pseudokinase family, negatively regulates c-Jun activity during proliferative T cell responses and exhaustion.

A CRISPR knock-in strategy that uses endogenous gene regulatory mechanisms can engineer ‘armoured’ CAR T cells that secrete proinflammatory cytokines directly within a tumour without causing toxicity, leading to prolonged survival in mice.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

The bacterial ubiquitin ligase NleL evades host defence mechanisms both by inhibiting pyroptosis and by preventing infected intestinal epithelial cells from being extruded into the lumen and expelled in the faeces.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

The characterization of 4,645 whole-genome and 19,184 exome sequences, covering most types of cancer, identifies 81 single-base substitution, doublet-base substitution and small-insertion-and-deletion mutational signatures, providing a systematic overview of the mutational processes that contribute to cancer development.

In 1923, Otto Warburg published his landmark study, in which he described his seminal observations related to metabolic shifts in cancer, often referred to as the Warburg effect. His work laid the foundation for an understanding of how metabolic reconfiguration contributes to cancer onset and progression. Several researchers in the field share their thoughts on what this discovery means to them and how it has inspired their scientific journey.

The few options available for the measurement of in-plane and cross-plane thermal conductivity of covalent organic frameworks films limit their application for lightweight thermal management. Here, the authors measure both, the in-plane and cross-plane thermal conductivity of two dimensional covalent organic frameworks with different pore sizes using laser-based pump-probe techniques.

The results from a state-of-the-art suite of hydrodynamical cosmological zoom-in simulations show how globular clusters naturally emerge in the Standard Cosmology and also reveal the existence of a new class of object called globular-cluster-like dwarfs.

Ultrafast laser pulses are useful to study electron dynamics in chemical bonds, but their influence on bond breaking is not fully understood. Wu et al. study H₂ bond breaking with coincidence techniques, and find a phase-dependent anisotropy of the H⁺fragmentation even for isotropic multicycle laser pulses.

It was recently demonstrated that particular materials with non-trivial electronic band structure support quasiparticle excitations described by the relativistic Weyl equation. Here, the authors explore how an analogous magnonic band structure may exist in breathing pyrochlore antiferromagnets.

The authors study the light-driven dynamics of attractive and repulsive Fermi polarons in monolayer WSe₂. They show that the resonance shifts of Fermi polarons are valley-selective; the resonance shifts of attractive polarons increase with Fermi-sea density, while those of repulsive polarons decrease.

There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

In somatic cells the mechanisms maintaining the chromosome ends are normally inactivated; however, cancer cells can re-activate these pathways to support continuous growth. Here, the authors characterize the telomeric landscapes across tumour types and identify genomic alterations associated with different telomere maintenance mechanisms.

With the generation of large pan-cancer whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing projects, a question remains about how comparable these datasets are. Here, using The Cancer Genome Atlas samples analysed as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the authors explore the concordance of mutations called by whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing techniques.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

Whole-genome sequencing data from more than 2,500 cancers of 38 tumour types reveal 16 signatures that can be used to classify somatic structural variants, highlighting the diversity of genomic rearrangements in cancer.

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

A pan-cancer genomic analysis reports the effects of structural variations on chromatin domains (TADs). Most TAD disruptions do not result in appreciable changes in expression of nearby genes.

An analysis of 2,954 genomes from 38 cancer subtypes identified 19,166 retrotransposition events in 35% of samples. Aberrant LINE-1 retrotranspositions can lead to the deletion of tumor-suppressor genes as well as the amplification of oncogenes.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

Some cancer patients first present with metastases where the location of the primary is unidentified; these are difficult to treat. In this study, using machine learning, the authors develop a method to determine the tissue of origin of a cancer based on whole sequencing data.

The authors present SVclone, a computational method for inferring the cancer cell fraction of structural variants from whole-genome sequencing data.

Many tumours exhibit hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypoxic tumours often respond poorly to therapy. Here, the authors quantify hypoxia in 1188 tumours from 27 cancer types, showing elevated hypoxia links to increased mutational load, directing evolutionary trajectories.

Epitaxial BaTiO₃ ultra scaled nanoislands (30−60 nm) on Si exhibit an electrically switchable topological center down-convergent polar pattern. The peculiar island shape induces a lateral swirling component, which confers chirality to the polar domains.

The precise role of somatostatin-expressing interneurons in regulating hemodynamics remains unclear. Here, authors find that the activation of these neurons induces astrocytic calcium signaling, which subsequently drives delayed vasodilation and enhances layer-specific fMRI signals in response to prolonged sensory stimulation.

In this study the authors consider the structural variants (SVs) present within cancer cases of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. They report hundreds of genes, including known cancer-associated genes for which the nearby presence of a SV breakpoint is associated with altered expression.

Cancers evolve as they progress under differing selective pressures. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, the authors present the method TrackSig the estimates evolutionary trajectories of somatic mutational processes from single bulk tumour data.