Each year, about 85,000 adolescents and young adults (AYA) between the ages of 15 and 39 are diagnosed with cancer in the United States. According to the National Cancer Institute, this represents about 4% of all new cancer diagnoses.

Depending on age and specific diagnosis, many AYA people with cancer may be treated at either a pediatric cancer center or an adult cancer center. However, often these patients don’t feel comfortable in either setting as they feel too old for settings gear toward young children, but too young in centers where most of the patients are elderly.

This population also must navigate challenges surrounding normal milestones for others their age, such as pursuing an education, establishing a career or creating a family. Additionally, financial instability and lack of insurance coverage often deter AYAs from seeking timely medical attention, further complicating their prognosis.

The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and the Alliance Foundation Trials (AFT) have several active trials specifically poised to help the AYA population as well as others open to people in the AYA demographic.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy have developed a set of novel, first-in-class drugs that inhibit hypoxia-inducible factors 1 and 2, a pair of transcription factors considered to be “master regulators” of cancer progression. The study, to be published April 2 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), shows that these drugs, when combined with immunotherapy, can completely eliminate breast, colorectal, melanoma, and prostate tumors in mice, suggesting that they could eventually be used to treat a broad range of cancers in humans.

A new study led by researchers at the University of Liège highlights the unexpected role of Stard7 in the development of intestinal cancers. Long seen as a transporter of some lipids to mitochondria, Stard7 now appears to be a key player in mitochondrial metabolism and tumour development in the intestine.