Despite cancer rates similar to Western Europe, patients in the Balkans are far more likely to die from the disease. Experts point to delayed detection, weak primary care, and limited access to advanced diagnostics as the principal culprits.

Across the Balkan Peninsula, health systems face a stark contradiction: while the incidence of solid tumours broadly mirrors that of Western Europe, mortality remains stubbornly elevated. Lung, colorectal, and prostate cancers are the leading killers among men, while breast, lung, colorectal, and cervical cancers take the heaviest toll on women.

New treatments – including experimental cancer vaccines from Moderna show promise in late-stage trials, but their cost puts them out of reach for most patients in the region. According to Dr Marchela Koleva, founder and Head of the Department of Medical Oncology at St. Sophia Hospital the core problem is not a lack of therapies but a chronic failure to diagnose early enough.

With the continuous advancement of deep-space exploration missions, the potential threat of microorganisms in the closed environment of space stations to astronauts' health has attracted increasing attention. Fusobacterium nucleatum, as an opportunistic pathogen colonizing the oral cavity and mucosal sites, is closely associated with various diseases including periodontal disease and colorectal cancer. Under extreme space conditions such as microgravity and radiation, the growth, virulence, drug resistance, and metabolic characteristics of microorganisms may undergo significant alterations, thereby increasing the risk of infection for astronauts. However, current research on the effects of microgravity on anaerobic bacteria remains extremely limited, and the phenotypic changes and molecular regulatory mechanisms of F. nucleatum under simulated microgravity conditions have not yet been elucidated, making it difficult to provide a scientific basis for the prevention and control of anaerobic bacterial contamination and infection risk assessment in space stations.