Scientists at OHSU have created a new nanoparticle that could make ultrasound-based cancer treatments more effective and safer, while also helping prevent tumors from coming back. To make the therapy even more powerful, the scientists also attached a potent chemotherapy drug to the peptide on the nanoparticle’s surface. The ultrasound physically destroys the tumor, and the drug helps eliminate any leftover cancer cells that might cause the tumor to return.

In a study published in Nature, University of Michigan researchers have identified that the balance between two proteins—STAT3 and STAT5—is important for making tumors vulnerable to immune checkpoint therapy, and targeting STAT3 degradation is a potential novel cancer immunotherapy strategy.

In a new study published in Nature, researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center explore a surprising phenomenon in which high doses of radiation cause growth in existing metastatic tumors that weren’t directly treated with radiation.

Clinicians from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and four other institutions have demonstrated that doctors can gain a wealth of knowledge about a patient’s cancer by using multiple laboratory techniques to study tumor tissue taken from needle biopsies of glioblastoma, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have identified a series of changes in the architecture and cell composition of connective tissues of the breast, known as stromal tissue, that is associated with an increased risk of developing aggressive breast cancer among women with benign breast disease, and poorer rates of survival among women with invasive breast cancer. This process, which they call stromal disruption, could potentially be used as a biomarker to identify women with benign breast disease who are at high risk of developing aggressive breast cancers, as well as those with breast cancer who may be at increased risk of recurrence or death.

The United States-based National Comprehensive Cancer Network is among groups from up to 75 countries taking part in the Cancer Planners Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.