| |||||
| |||||
Hello Nature readers, | |||||
Up to 8% of people who undergo bladder removal to treat bladder cancer die within 90 days. (Zephyr/Science Photo Library) | |||||
Organ-sparing treatment succeeds in trialSome people with bladder cancer might no longer need life-altering organ-removal surgery, thanks to a new drug combination. In a phase 2 clinical trial, 76 people with bladder cancer were given the immunotherapy nivolumab plus two chemotherapy agents (gemcitabine and cisplatin). Thirty-three participants had a complete response, meaning that their tumours disappeared entirely and bladder-removal surgery was no longer necessary. Reference: Nature Medicine paper (2 October) | |||||
How tumours remote-control fat wastingCancer cells can trigger the catastrophic loss of body fat by secreting proteins that travel through the bloodstream to distant white adipose tissue. These cancer proteins over-activate the NOTCH1 gene in the lining of the blood vessels of fat tissue, a study in mouse and human models has found. This causes the production of retinoic acid to spike, which initiates fat-tissue wasting. Blocking retinoic acid with a drug prevented fat wasting in mice with pancreatic cancer. "As [retinoic acid] signaling is crucial for many biological functions, further research is needed to determine whether long-term intake of such drugs would be tolerable," the researchers write. Reference: Nature Cancer paper (25 September) | |||||
Scouring amino acids for drug targetsResearchers have created a list of potential cancer drug targets by base editing more than 1,750 proteins to investigate which of them promoted cancer growth. They focused on one type of amino acid found in proteins, called cysteines. Out of more than 13,800 cysteines, about 160 affected cancer development when they were genetically edited. Reference: Nature Chemical Biology paper (2 October) | |||||
ACCESS NATURE AND 54 OTHER NATURE JOURNALS Nature+ is our most affordable 30-day subscription, giving you online access to a wide range of specialist Nature Portfolio journals, including Nature. Nature+ is for personal use and is suitable for students. | |||||
| |||||
Contagious cancer persists amid chaosScientists have discovered that cancer cells can be transmitted from one cockle to another for thousands of years, despite the chaotic genome of the organisms. Cockle cancer cells had up to 350 chromosomes instead of the normal 38 found in healthy mollusc cells, a study of around 7,000 cockles found. "The extreme chromosomal instability … contrasts with the quiescent karyotypes of transmissible cancers in dogs and Tasmanian devils, challenging the notion that a stable genomic architecture is required for long-term survival of cancer lineages," write the authors. El País | 7 min readReference: Nature Cancer paper (2 October) | |||||
Cockles are bivalve molluscs in the Cardiidae family. (Duncan Usher/Alamy) | |||||
In the news
| |||||
| |||||
AI's uncertain place in drug discoveryIn August, biotechnology firm Recursion used artificial intelligence (AI) to predict how 36 billion potential drugs could bind to more than 15,000 proteins. This built on the work of Google Deepmind's AlphaFold, which predicted the 3D shapes of proteins on the basis of their amino-acid sequences. Researchers who spoke to Nature agree this is an impressive amount of data, but they aren't yet sure about its quality. The interactions are based on predictions rather than experiments, so they might lack the atomic-scale resolution needed in drug discovery. Recursion predicted 2.8 quadrillion interactions, meaning that even a small percentage of false positives could cause expensive delays while efforts are made to validate them. Nature | 6 min read | |||||
| |||||
| |||||
Regular physical exercise might stimulate a range of immune cells to infiltrate 'cold' tumours, which lack this kind of infiltration, thereby heating them up. "There is also evidence that immune cells from blood collected after an exercise bout could be used as adoptive cell therapy for cancer," write physical-activity researcher Carmen Fiuza-Luces and her colleagues. (See a high-resolution version of this image.) Reference: Nature Reviews Immunology paper (4 October) (Carmen Fiuza-Luces et al./Nat Rev Immunol.) | |||||
Quote of the week"You have to fight two wars, one against cancer, the other against the crazy Russian army shooting at you."Paediatric oncologist Roman Kizyma says the treatment of children with cancer has been severely disrupted by the war in Ukraine. At times, the hospital has run out of drugs, had no access to electricity and faced doctor and nurse shortages. (Scientific American | 7 min read, paywall) | |||||
| |||||
| |||||
| |||||
| |||||
You received this newsletter because you subscribed with the email address: [email protected] Please add [email protected] to your address book. Enjoying this newsletter? You can use this form to recommend it to a friend or colleague — thank you! Want more Briefings? Update your subscription preferences. Had enough? Unsubscribe from all Nature Briefing newsletters. Fancy a bit of a read? View our privacy policy. Forwarded by a friend? Get the Briefing straight to your inbox: subscribe for free. Get more from Nature: Register for free on nature.com to sign up for other newsletters specific to your field and email alerts from Nature Research journals. Nature | The Springer Nature Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom Nature Research, part of Springer Nature. |