The history of medicine has often been reduced to hagiography – a celebration of past events lacking critical scrutiny. The contemporary history of oncology, with its ‘breakthroughs’ and ‘disruptive’ innovations, has likewise been exposed to [more]
European Reference Networks can only work if member states designate and develop their own accredited specialist centres that can network across borders. Simon Crompton talks to some of the policy makers, clinicians and patient advocates [more]
Population studies, mouse models, and mechanistic studies all show that metformin, a cheap well-tolerated diabetes drug, impacts in some way on how some cancers develop and progress. Anna Wagstaff talks to clinicians and researchers building [more]
Training Egypt’s breast surgeons in techniques of plastic surgery is giving survivors a better quality of life and transforming women’s attitudes towards the disease. Having proved it is possible in his own country, Omar Youssef [more]
Precision medicine was meant to see the end of ‘maximum tolerated dose’ as the standard for introducing new drugs. It hasn’t happened, and many patients continue to suffer unnecessary toxicity from overtreatment, with health services [more]
Precision oncology is about understanding what is driving an individual’s cancer growth, resistance and metastasis, and then targeting those pathways accordingly. Our current research models are good at developing drugs to hit targets. They are [more]
The advanced breast cancer community has spent many years defining the treatment, care and support patients need to help them live longer and feel and function better. They’ve now formed an alliance to advocate for [more]
A chromosomal alteration present in almost all patients with Hodgkin lymphoma makes the disease uniquely vulnerable to PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint blockers. Astrid Pavlovsky reviews the trial evidence and clinical experience, and looks to the future [more]
Ralph Weichselbaum and colleagues explore how enhancing innate and adaptive immunity by combining radiotherapy and immune therapy could tip the balance of the host immune response to promote cure. This is a summary, by Janet [more]
To treat or not to treat? Different people respond in different ways to learning they have lesions that may or may not develop into threatening cancers. Charlotte Huff talks to ‘patients’, doctors and psychologists about [more]
UPMC is a 14-billion-dollar integrated global health enterprise, closely linked to the University of Pittsburgh. Twenty years ago it opened a transplant hospital in Sicily. Since then, its International arm has expanded to build hospitals [more]