A study published in Cell advances understanding of how drugs shape vital cellular structures known as biomolecular condensates, blob-like mechanisms that drive gene regulation processes and have been linked to Alzheimer's, ALS and cancer.

Tumor cells coexist with diverse immune, stromal, and neural cells in a complex microenvironment. Recent single-cell and spatial transcriptomics have uncovered specialized cell subsets that drive cancer progression, immune evasion, and treatment response. A new review synthesizes these advances, introduces the “virtual tumor” concept for AI-driven ecosystem modeling, and outlines a roadmap from fundamental tumor microenvironment (TME) biology to next-generation precision immunotherapies targeting specific cell populations and their coordinated networks.