TAMEST (Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology) has announced Maralice Conacci-Sorrell, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Cell Biology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, as the recipient of the 2026 Mary Beth Maddox Award and Lectureship in cancer research. She was chosen for her pioneering research revealing how cancer cells harness nutrients to drive their growth and for creating targeted strategies to suppress otherwise untreatable cancers.

This research delves into the association between anti-diabetic medications and cancer, exploring mechanisms beyond just glycemic control and body weight management.

City of Hope will detail a Nature Metabolism study by Dr. Charles Brenner, which uncovered how citrin deficiency (CD) can trigger fat buildup in the liver — even in lean individuals. The research reveals how the liver turns on a hormone that reduces cravings for sweets and alcohol. The findings could lead to new therapies for a variety of health conditions, including fatty liver disease or MASLD, which afflicts more than 1 billion people worldwide and increases the risk for developing type 2 diabetes and liver cancer. 

Researchers at the University of Tartu Institute of Computer Science, Junior Research Fellow of Artificial Intelligence Joonas Ariva and Associate Professor in Artificial Intelligence Dmytro Fishman, together with radiologists from Tartu University Hospital and engineers at Better Medicine, have developed an AI-based tool that accelerates the detection of kidney cancer. Its effectiveness was validated in a study published in Nature Communications Medicine.

Kyoto, Japan -- Colorectal cancer, or CRC, is the world's second most lethal cancer based on the number of deaths, and is the third most prevalent malignant tumor. Doctors and patients have long been hoping for better diagnostics for prognosis, such as molecular subtyping, which uses data collected from cancer stem cells, or tumor-initiating cells, to further divide one type of cancer into subgroups. It may correlate with patient outcomes and enable better prognoses.

Though many CRC tissue samples have been analyzed and classified based on mRNA gene expression, currently the practical application of these studies in patient prognosis is limited for colorectal cancer. This motivated a team of researchers from Kyoto University to examine cancer stem cells for the molecular subtyping of CRC.

"We need more comprehensive and clinically useful markers and their signatures to help predict the outcome of each patient," says first author Fumihiko Kakizaki.

The December tip sheet includes a range of cancer-related story ideas including how diet and exercise can make treatment more tolerable, Agent Orange linked to earlier, more severe MDS, milder chemo for lymphoma, new guidelines for pregnant women with blood cancer, art in cancer survivorship, and more.

EPFL researchers have successfully engineered cells of the immune system to more effectively recognize cancer cells. The work, covered in two papers, turns the previously lab-based method into a full-blown immunotherapy strategy.

Lymphedema after head and neck cancer is considerably more common than previously assumed and can persist long after cancer treatment has finished. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered that patients with a low level of physical activity face a higher risk of developing lymphedema. They have also noted that a lymph scanner objectively measures changes in the condition – a method that has now been introduced in Sweden’s Southern Healthcare Region.