People diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in 2025 can expect to live for an extra six or seven months, compared to the average survival time for patients diagnosed in 2011, according to a major study of patient data in the US presented at the Advanced Breast Cancer Eighth International Consensus Conference. Researchers say the increase in survival time coincides with the availability of more effective treatments for advanced breast cancer, as well as wider improvements in diagnosis and quality of care.

In preclinical studies, researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center have tested a new combination therapy for hormone-resistant, estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer and were able to shrink tumors, reduce the number of cancer stem cells and reprogram the immune environment to be less supportive of cancer growth.

♦Successful development of a stealth cloak (invisibility cloak) to protect nanomachines introduced into living organisms from foreign body reactions over extended periods: Constructed a stable ion pair network composed of polyanions and polycations on the nanomachine surface, devising a structure that prevents protein adsorption and attacks from macrophages.

♦Achieved ultra-long circulation in vivo with a half-life exceeding 100 hours after intravenous administration (10 times longer than previous stealth DDS systems).

♦Nanomachines equipped with asparaginase, an enzyme that breaks down L-asparagine, circulate long-term within the body, depleting L-asparagine—essential for cancer cell survival—from tumor tissues.

♦Confirmed the efficacy of starvation therapy for refractory breast cancer using a mouse model.

♦Furthermore, it breaks down the thick stroma (fibrous tissue) that blocks drug penetration into pancreatic cancer (such as immune checkpoint inhibitors), achieving extremely high efficacy (long-term survival) through synergistic effects with cancer immunotherapy.

♦A paper detailing the presentation content：

Junjie Li^*, Kazuko Toh, Panyue Wen, Xueying Liu, Anjaneyulu Dirisala, Haochen Guo, Joachim F. R. Van Guyse, Saed Abbasi, Yasutaka Anraku, Yuki Mochida, Hiroaki Kinoh, Horacio Cabral, Masaru Tanaka, and Kazunori Kataoka^*

Nature Biomedical Engineering (2025)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-025-01534-1