Mouse Avatars

Meet some of the people featured in the April 2015 issue of The Scientist.

Cancer treatment becomes more and more personal.

April 2015's selection of notable quotes

Deciphering how a jumping spider sees the world and processes visual information may yield insights into long-standing robotics problems.

The same microRNAs can have opposing roles in cancer.

Fate mapping allows researchers to follow cancer progression from its cell type of origin.

Even when a clinical trial fails, some patients improve. What can researchers learn from these exceptional responders?

Researchers face roadblocks to treating an individual patient’s cancer as a unique disease.

Treating cancer by shutting down the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway

Scientists make oxygen-filled microbubbles designed to increase tumor sensitivity to radiation.

Expert tips for isolating and culturing cancer stem cells

A guide to glycan microarrays

Tumor-targeting T-cell therapies are generating remarkable remissions in hard-to-beat cancers—and attracting millions of dollars of investment along the way.

The tale of p53, a widely studied tumor suppressor gene, illustrates the inventiveness of researchers who turn mishaps into discoveries.

Junk DNA, Cuckoo, Sapiens, and Cool

Alfred Donné’s microscopic daguerreotypes described the cellular symptoms of leukemia for the first time.

In estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer, the transcription factor IRF1 tips the balance between cellular suicide and survival through autophagy.

Activating signaling pathways, rather than individual genes, reveals roles for both growth and dedifferentiation in establishing resistance to cancer treatments.

Gut bacteria control tumor growth via the mammalian immune system.

Charles Sawyers, who began his research career just as the genetic details of human oncogenes were emerging, codeveloped Gleevec, the quintessential targeted cancer therapy.

Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Columbia University. Age: 41

Personal drug regimens based on xenograft mice harboring a single patient’s tumor still need to prove their true utility in medicine.