Immunotherapy has transformed cancer care, yet many "cold tumors," including ovarian, breast, and prostate cancers, remain resistant because they evade immune recognition. While chronic environmental stress is known to influence immunity, exactly how it undermines the body's natural cancer-fighting defenses has remained unclear. A new study from Korea uncovers how long-term environmental stress drives immune dysfunction, helping explain why cold tumors continue to evade even advanced immunotherapies. 

While cancer cells acquire malignant traits through epigenetic remodeling, it remains unclear how immune-derived inflammatory factors regulate the epigenetics of colorectal cancer cells. Now, researchers have discovered that the interleukin-26 produced by exhausted T cells can reprogram the cancer cell epigenome, promoting immune evasion. These findings provide new insights into the complex landscape of cancer immunotherapy and highlight potential opportunities to improve future treatment strategies.

Researchers at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine) have identified a ‘master switch’ responsible for driving tumour growth in an aggressive form of breast cancer. Blocking the switch with a targeted drug was also found to reduce cancer cell growth and reduce its spread.

This World Breast Cancer Research Day, the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology is highlighting the importance of clinical research in advancing better treatments and improving early detection to ultimately help prevent and cure breast cancer. Although both men and women can develop breast cancer, the disease disproportionately affects women. On average, women in the United States have about a 1 in 8 chance of developing breast cancer during their lifetime, according to the National Cancer Institute. In 2026, an estimated 321,910 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and about 42,140 will die from the disease. An estimated 2,670 men will also be diagnosed with breast cancer this year.   

>Solving the problem of mRNA-loaded lipid nanoparticles accumulating in the liver and causing unintended expression of pharmacologically active proteins

>By coating the walls of intrahepatic capillaries (liver sinusoidal walls), the accumulation of lipid nanoparticles in the liver is prevented (demonstrated in animal studies)

>Improved efficacy and safety in infectious prevention vaccines, cancer treatment vaccines, and cytokine therapies

>Substances with established clinical safety profiles are used as coating agents (enabling rapid clinical trials)

>Published online in ACS Nano: http://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.6c08403

- KAIST, Sungkyunkwan University, and CHA University develop a patient-specific blood-brain tumor barrier-on-a-chip model to predict individual responses to glioblastoma therapies

- On-chip drug responses closely match patients’ clinical treatment courses, highlighting the model’s potential as a platform for personalized treatment selection and anticancer drug development

A new imaging system produces clearer images taken through deep tissue, dense fog, or other environments where existing imaging systems struggle. Unlike standard near-infrared systems, it uses low-cost silicon-based detectors. The method could help improve cancer diagnosis and imaging systems used in self-driving cars.