Whether as primary tumors or metastases, brain tumors remain stubbornly intractable to the progress that has occurred in many other tumor types. As Igor Vivanco, who is a senior lecturer in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science at King’s College London, noted in his talk at the European Society for Medical Oncology Targeted Anticancer Therapies (ESMO TAT) meeting in Paris this week, the last win in glioblastoma was the addition of temozolomide to the radiotherapy standard of care in 2005. And temozolomide’s benefit is measured in months, not years.

Lymphatic malformation (LM), a vascular anomaly originating from lymphatic endothelial cells, can progress to malignant lymphangiosarcoma (LAS) in a fraction of patients. Scientists from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine recently conducted a study to unveil the mechanisms underlying LM malignant transformation to LAS and found that inhibiting autophagy can prevent this malignant transformation.

Radiotherapy is commonly used to treat solid tumors; promoting DNA damage in tumoral cells is the main mechanism for its cytotoxic effect, and its potential to induce innate and adaptive immune responses is being explored.

In a striking demonstration of how the success of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 has opened up the potential of the technology in cancer, mice that cleared a tumor after a single administration of an mRNA vaccine, also cleared a second tumor without receiving further immunization. This display of potent immunogenicity formed part of a head-to-head study of three different mRNA technology platforms in human papillomavirus (HPV)-16 associated tumors.