Living near toxic sites linked to aggressive breast cancer
Reports and Proceedings
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 10-Oct-2025 19:11 ET (10-Oct-2025 23:11 GMT/UTC)
Women living close to federally designated Superfund sites are more likely to develop aggressive breast cancers — including the hard-to-treat triple-negative subtype — according to new studies from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
The aim of immunotherapy strategies is to leverage cells in the patient's own immune system to destroy tumor cells. Using a preclinical model, scientists from the Institut Pasteur and Inserm successfully stimulated an effective anti-tumor immune response by reprogramming the death of malignant B cells. They demonstrated an effective triple-therapy approach for treating forms of blood cancer such as certain lymphomas and leukemias which affect B cells. The study was published on August 15 in the journal Science Advances.
Scientists have developed a highly sensitive single-cell tool that can help uncover links to complex diseases. Known as single-cell DNA-RNA-sequencing (SDR-seq), this tool created by scientists from EMBL's Genome Biology Unit can study both DNA and RNA simultaneously inside the same cell – a critical element in understanding how genetic variants impact gene expression in what’s called the non-coding region of the genome.
With SDR-seq, the scientists found that even small changes in DNA can change how genes are regulated in stem cells, and in a type of blood cancer called B-cell lymphoma.
SDR-seq offers genome biologists scale, precision, and speed to help understand and eventually treat a broad range of diseases.
Treatments for cancer are continuously improving, but they can still cause debilitating, even fatal, side effects. Immune checkpoint inhibitors, or ICIs, have revolutionized cancer therapy, yet their use can trigger a rare but deadly side effect that affects the heart: myocarditis. ICI-related myocarditis has a mortality of up to 40%.
The adverse side effects caused by ICIs are immune-related. The immune system becomes hyperactive and attacks tissue that is healthy, not cancerous. In ICI-related myocarditis, immune cells such as white blood cells, infiltrate the heart. It is extremely important to diagnose ICI-related myocarditis early, so treatment can be adjusted, and the risk of mortality can be lowered. However, early diagnosis has been difficult. ICI-related myocarditis cannot be easily detected via imaging of the heart and taking heart tissue samples for biopsy comes with its own risks.
CiQUS researchers have developed a molecular strategy based on self-assembling peptide nanotubes to deliver drugs into the nucleus of chemotherapy-resistant cancer cells.
All cells – from mammalian cells to microbes – can follow different biological paths. Whether they grow and divide, specialise, age or die depends on the pathway they take.
The decision about which path a cell takes is controlled by intracellular molecular clusters.
New findings by researchers at ETH Zurich could help influence a cell’s decisions to target diseases such as cancer.