A research group from the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) has found that an alteration in the POT1 gene prevents lung tissue from regenerating, which over time makes breathing difficult.

The mutation prevents telomeres, the structures that protect chromosomes, from repairing.

According to the authors, understanding the effect of mutations like this “is critical to developing personalised therapies” against ‘telomere syndromes’, a group of diseases that includes pulmonary fibrosis and several cancer types.

Colorectal cancer is one of the most common and deadly cancers worldwide, and treatment decisions for older patients remain highly debated. Now, researchers have found that oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy significantly improves survival only in stage III colorectal cancer patients aged 70 or younger. For patients over 70, the drug offered no survival advantage and led to higher rates of treatment discontinuation due to toxicity. Importantly, stage II patients showed no survival benefit at any age.

In a paper published in MedComm-Oncology, a research team demonstrated the significant biological role of RNA helicase DDX17 in inducing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma through β-catenin/TCF4 signaling pathway. High expression of DDX17 is closely associated with the invasive phenotype of hepatocellular carcinoma, and targeting this EMT pathway may provide a new therapeutic strategy for HCC metastasis.