Cancer
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A 443,451-Cell Map Finds Pancreatic Tumors Are Crowds, Not Types
Inside one pancreatic tumor, NYU and UC San Diego researchers found as many as 11 distinct clones, which muddies the subtype label used to choose chemotherapy. The drug targets they point to next arrive with a history.
CancerNorway's Own Screening Adviser Ran the Numbers: About One in 86 Screened Women Overdiagnosed
By its own adviser's estimate, Norway's mammography program overdiagnoses about one in 86 screened women, roughly three for every breast cancer death it prevents, while a 58-trial review finds early detection is no reliable stand-in for fewer deaths.
CancerRoche's KRAS Pill Beat the Older Drugs on Survival, an Endpoint Lumakras Never Won Against Chemotherapy
Median survival ran 17.7 months on divarasib and 12.0 on a control arm that was nine-tenths Lumakras, a drug whose own confirmatory trial showed no survival edge over chemotherapy.
CancerMayo's Pancreatic Cancer AI Also Flags One Cancer-Free Scan in Five
Mayo's REDMOD caught 73 percent of pancreatic cancers on CT scans taken months before diagnosis, nearly double the radiologists' rate. It also flagged about 19 percent of cancer-free scans, and its lead researcher says it has not been tested at deployment prevalence.
CancerCompass Plans to File a Biliary Cancer Drug Without the Survival Trial the FDA Asked For
Tovecimig plus chemotherapy shrank more biliary tract tumors than chemotherapy alone, but median survival was 8.9 months against 9.4, and 93.5 percent of the combination arm had grade 3 or worse adverse events. The FDA recommended a survival trial before filing. Compass plans to file anyway.
CancerHengrui's Breast Cancer Drug More Than Doubled Progression-Free Survival While Severe Anemia Hit Four in Ten Patients
Trastuzumab rezetecan pushed median progression-free survival to 16.4 months from 6.8 on chemotherapy in 551 patients, all treated in China, while grade 3 or worse anemia reached 42.8 percent against 4.8 percent.
CancerChina Still Mines Chrysotile Asbestos, and Its Lung Cancer Rate Keeps Climbing
China's smoking rate and fine-particle pollution both fell, yet age-standardized lung cancer incidence rose. Zhejiang researchers argue that lung cancers from the chrysotile the country still mines are going uncounted.
CancerThe Vitamin C Trial That Missed Its Goal and Counted 11 Deaths Against 24
Copenhagen and USC researchers gave 1,000 mg of plain vitamin C a day to people with pre-leukemic blood disorders. The mutant clones grew regardless, but over three years of follow-up 11 patients assigned to the vitamin died, against 24 assigned to placebo.
CancerThe Number Behind GSK's Rectal Cancer Approval Is 47 Percent, Not 76
Independent reviewers confirmed a year-long complete response in 54 of 116 AZUR-1 patients. GSK's release also carried an exploratory 76 percent. For a narrow slice of rectal cancer patients, the drug may still spare them radiation and surgery.
CancerTo Keep Cancer-Fighting Cells Alive, a Sloan Kettering Lab Wants Them to Fight Less Hard
Memorial Sloan Kettering researchers say throttling exhausted T cells with a drug class already used against melanoma may keep them alive longer. So far the evidence comes only from lab and animal models.
CancerThe Urine Test That Could Retire the Bladder Scope Already Has a Startup Behind It
Stanford's uRARE-seq caught 95 percent of localized bladder cancers in a case-control study and nearly tripled cytology's hit rate. It has not faced a prospective trial, and its lead author holds a stake in the spinout commercializing it.
CancerThe Sepsis Drug Eli Lilly Withdrew in 2011 Has a Second Life in a Dish of Blood Stem Cells
Soaked in activated protein C for one hour, human blood stem cells divided less, stayed quiescent, and engrafted better after transplant. The catch: the result lives in mice, and the molecule is one Eli Lilly withdrew as a failed sepsis drug in 2011.
CancerThe Marrow Around a Common Aging Blood Clone Is Already Inflamed and Starting to Scar
Clonal hematopoiesis turns up in 10 to 20 percent of adults over 60, and the blame has always landed on the mutant cell. Single-cell maps of living marrow show the tissue around it inflamed and laying down scar before any cancer appears, which suggests the clone is not acting alone.
CancerThe Glioblastoma Trial No Drug Company Paid For Posted an 82% Six-Month Progression-Free Rate
Calgary oncologists bought controlled-release niacin at retail, added it to standard treatment, and cleared their own preset bar with room to spare. The trial is small, single-arm and untidy on paper, and it was paid for entirely with grant money.
CancerNature Medicine Retracted the Lung Cancer Trial That Made Infusion Timing Look Like a Free Win
Its protocol was dated January 2022 but cited papers from 2024, and the editors called its survival curve smoother than a phase 3 trial should produce. A top journal published it anyway. The early-infusion claim is gone, but the body-clock question is still open.
CancerKetamine Failed Its Only Adequately Powered Cancer-Pain Trial, and Palliative Care Still Reaches for It
Ketamine's one adequately powered trial in advanced cancer pain found no benefit over placebo, more toxicity and worse quality of life. Fourteen years on, a 2026 review still tells clinicians to consider it.
CancerCat Breast Tumors Mirror Ours Genetically, and the Cure Talk Never Left the Dish
Almost 500 pet cats supplied tumors for the first large-scale map of feline cancer genes. Every claim about treating people still rests on cat tissue grown in a lab.
CancerA Generic Vitamin D Drug Quadrupled Chemo Responses in a Small Pancreatic Cancer Trial, and Its Phase 2 Never Ran
Forty-two percent of patients on paricalcitol plus chemo saw their tumors shrink, versus 9 percent on placebo, in a 36-person safety trial. The randomized phase 2 meant to follow it never ran.
CancerMerck and Moderna Say Their Melanoma Vaccine Worked, but Two Months On the Public Still Hasn't Seen by How Much
Merck and Moderna have announced only that their phase 3 met its endpoints. The smaller trial behind the excitement missed the conventional two-sided significance bar, and one bank has modeled a price as high as $475,000 per patient.
CancerCancer Wasting Was Hiding in Two Million Routine Weigh-Ins
At Memorial Sloan Kettering, 48.8% of 59,493 tumor-sequenced cancer patients had at least one cachectic weight-loss episode over about five years. No drug is approved for it, and a French hospital coded it in under 1% of its cancer patients.
CancerThe 80.5 Percent Headline, and the Three Confirmed Responses Behind It
Vividion led its colorectal announcement with an 80.5 percent disease-control rate. In that same group, three tumors shrank enough to count as a response.
CancerThe Inherited Lung Cancer Gene That Rode Out of Appalachia on a Wagon Road
Carriers were about 25 times as likely to develop lung cancer as everyone else, more than 60 times if they never smoked. The variant came over with British and Irish settlers, concentrated in Southern Appalachia after a founder event two centuries ago, and surfaced in a consumer spit-kit database, n
CancerA Scientist Chased One Missing Blood Marker for Twenty Years. The Answer Was a Tiny Gene Hiding in Plain Sight.
More than 99.9 percent of people carry a blood marker called AnWj. For most of the few who don't, the absence is acquired, a sign of an underlying blood disorder or cancer rather than something they were born with.
CancerA 34-Year Mammography Advocate Co-Wrote the Study That Shrinks Screening's Biggest Harm
Overdiagnosis, the risk that screening treats cancers that never would have killed you, was pegged as high as 50 percent. A reinterpretation of eight old trials now puts it under 5, with an author who has promoted screening for 34 years.