Issue | April 2017 | Targeting Tumors | The Scientist Magazine®

Features

Anna Azvolinsky | Apr 1, 2017 | 10+ min read

Researchers unravel the sophisticated ways cancers evade treatments, including immunotherapies, designed to destroy them.

Neoantigens Enable Personalized Cancer Immunotherapy

Stephen P. Schoenberger and Ezra Cohen | Apr 1, 2017 | 9 min read

Tumors’ mutations can encode the seeds of their own destruction, in the form of immunogenic peptides recognized by T cells.

Circadian Rhythms Influence Treatment Effects

Jyoti Madhusoodanan | Apr 1, 2017 | 10+ min read

Across many diseases, taking medication at specific times of day may make the therapy more effective.

Contributors

Meet some of the people featured in the April 2017 issue of The Scientist.

Editorial

Hitting It Out of the Park

Cancer can be as evasive and slippery as a spitball, but new immunotherapies are starting to connect.

Speaking of Science

Notable Science Quotes

Eugene Garfield, the cancer moonshot, employee genetic testing, and more

Freeze Frame

Caught on Camera

Selected Images of the Day from the-scientist.com

Notebook

Streakers, Poopers, and Performers: The Wilder Side of Wildlife Cameras

Human visitors to camera traps display, well, human behavior.

Cooking Up Cancer?

Overcooked potatoes and burnt toast contain acrylamide, a potential carcinogen that researchers have struggled to reliably link to human cancers.

Record-Setting Corn Grows 45 Feet Tall

A plant breeder succeeds in growing a huge maize plant thanks to a known mutation and a few environmental tricks.

ACS Statistics Reveal Continuing Declines in Cancer Mortality

Despite an overall decrease in the number of US cancer deaths, some cancer types are on the rise, and disparities remain between genders and ethnicities.

Critic at Large

Opinion: More Biomarkers Needed for Cancer Immunotherapy

Measuring PD-L1 levels was a great start. Now we need to quantify more protein biomarkers, assess the tumor mutational landscape, and examine immune cell signatures, too.

News Analysis

Lipids Take the Lead in Metastasis

Researchers find diverse ways that the molecules can regulate cancer’s spread.

Modus Operandi

Targeting Tregs Halts Cancer’s Immune Helpers

New monoclonal antibodies kill both cancer-promoting immunosuppressive cells and tumor cells in culture.

The Literature

Starvation Response Triggers Melanoma Invasion

Through similar mechanisms, amino acid depletion in culture and cytokine activity in the tumor microenvironment prompt cancer cells to metastasize.

Extra Centrosomes Can Drive Tumor Formation in Mice

Mice engineered to overproduce the organelles involved in cell division spontaneously develop malignancies.

Scientists Successfully Transplant Human Leukemia Cells into Mice

While studying the progression of healthy cells into cancerous ones, researchers discover a way to engraft human blood cells into animals.

Profile

Location, Location, Location

Since first proposing that a cell’s function and biology depend on its surroundings, Mina Bissell continues to probe the role of the extracellular matrix.

Scientist to Watch

Angela Brooks: Splicing Specialist

At the University of California, Santa Cruz, the researcher combs the cancer genome, looking for weaknesses.

Lab Tools

Gel Scaffolds for Delivery of Immunotherapies

Using biocompatible polymers to carry cancer immune therapies directly to the tumor

Tracking the Evolutionary History of a Tumor

Analyzing single cell sequences to decipher the evolution of a tumor

Bio Business

Making CAR T-Cell Therapy Safer

Following a spate of patient deaths in clinical trials testing modified T cells for the treatment of cancer, researchers work to reduce the treatment’s toxicity without sacrificing efficacy.

Reading Frames

How Will Cancer Research Fare Under Trump?

The new administration has not yet made its intentions clear.

Foundations

A History of Screening for Natural Products to Fight Cancer

In the middle of the 20th century, the National Cancer Institute began testing plant extracts for chemotherapeutic potential—helping to discover some drugs still in use today.

April 2017

Targeting Tumors

Precision aim to spare healthy cells