An international team of researchers led by Dr Manel Esteller, head of the Cancer Epigenetics Group at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, has just published the most comprehensive analysis to date of the longest-lived person ever recorded, the Catalan woman Maria Branyas, who passed away at the end of 2024 at the age of 117. The peer-reviewed study, published in the prestigious international journal Cell Reports Medicine, concludes that the biology of supercentenarians is more complex than previously thought, and that the key may lie in a delicate balance between opposing forces.

It is well established that gut microbiome composition plays a pivotal role in human health – yet the precise connections are still not fully elucidated. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have moved a step closer to understanding these complex interactions: they have identified a cellular mechanism that alters the gut microbiome in a way that promotes cancer. An analysis of patient data shows that the findings also apply to humans.