https://medicalxpress.com/cancer-news/ en-us Latest medical news and research in Oncology Even when given the same drug, some patients respond well while others show little or no response. This is particularly true of immunotherapy. A research team at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) technology that can predict, in advance, which patients are likely to benefit from treatment. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-ai-tumor-aging-patterns-immunotherapy.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:40:22 EDT news711817561 An AI model created by researchers at King's can detect signs of faulty repair mechanisms in ovarian cancer cells, potentially leading to a low-cost, widely accessible diagnostic tool in the future. By analyzing tissue images, the model could accurately recognize tumors that contained broken DNA repair mechanisms. This could enable clinicians to choose treatments that exploit this flaw. The findings are published in Nature Communications. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-ai-faulty-dna-ovarian-cancer.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:00:19 EDT news711816361 Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and Johns Hopkins Children's Center report that bone marrow transplant using half-matched family donors achieved a 96% survival rate among child, adolescent and young adult patients with severe aplastic anemia, a rare, life-threatening disorder in which the bone marrow fails to produce enough healthy blood cells. The approach expands access to potentially curative treatment for patients who do not have a fully matched donor. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-bone-marrow-transplant-options-children.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:40:10 EDT news711814377 Results of a national clinical trial led by the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology in conjunction with NRG Oncology and the Canadian Cancer Trials Group show that a shorter, three-week radiation schedule following a mastectomy is as safe and effective as the standard five-week treatment for women undergoing breast reconstruction. The results of the RT CHARM trial (Alliance A221505) are published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-week-safe-option-breast-cancer.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:40:06 EDT news711806781 While AI offers the ability to improve human experts' ability to diagnose and treat diseases like breast cancer, well-publicized errors across the broader AI field are cause for concern. A team from the University of Pittsburgh has used PSC's flagship Bridges-2 supercomputer to design a deep neural network (DNN) that takes uncertainty into account in diagnosing breast scan images. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-trustworthy-ai-breast-cancer-method.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:20:12 EDT news711813601 Researchers from Newcastle University and Great Ormond Street Hospital have identified new predictors of relapse in children and young people with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) treated with the immunotherapy drug blinatumomab, as part of a U.K.-wide study. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-personalized-medicine-breakthrough-childhood-leukemia.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 15:40:01 EDT news711806799 Pancreatic cancer cells are remarkably good at doing one thing: growing. But new Texas A&M research suggests that two tiny molecules already present in the body may help slow them down. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-pancreatic-cancer-highlights-body-natural.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 15:00:01 EDT news711801181 Proteins linked to the immune system, cell adhesion, blood vessel formation and known prostate cancer genes were associated with the future risk of developing prostate cancer, including aggressive disease, in a new study led by researchers at Oxford Population Health. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-blood-proteins-reveal-clues-prostate.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:30:01 EDT news711792961 Loneliness, functional limitations and lack of social support were independently associated with depression in a large U.S.-based study of cancer survivors by Philip Baiden from The University of Texas Arlington, U.S., and colleagues, published Oct. 21, 2026, in the PLOS One. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-psychosocial-factors-linked-depression-cancer.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:00:05 EDT news711719305 Researchers at the University of Missouri have uncovered a promising way to protect saliva-producing glands from radiation damage that can make it difficult to eat, swallow, sleep and maintain oral hygiene. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-drug-salivary-glands-treatment.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:40:02 EDT news711795335 Wee1 inhibitors are a promising new cancer treatment, but serious side effects threaten their adoption in the clinic. Now, researchers from the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences (LMS), the University of Oxford and UCL have discovered a previously unknown role for Wee1 that could explain these effects. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-hidden-role-cancer-treatment-toxic.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:00:27 EDT news711714602 A bank of biological samples from thousands of Brazilians could help the Unified Health System (SUS), which is public and free, identify people at higher risk of developing certain types of cancer. In the future, the SUS could offer these individuals more personalized prevention and screening strategies. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-brazilian-biobank-personalize-cancer-health.html Wed, 21 Oct 2026 07:20:01 EDT news711779597 Some people with rectal cancer may now be able to skip chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday approved the immunotherapy Jemperli (dostarlimab-gxly) for certain adults with rectal cancer that hasn't been treated yet. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-drug-rectal-cancer-patients-chemotherapy.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 21:20:09 EDT news711729302 A UTHealth Houston-led team has identified a promising new avenue to curb the growth and spread of tumors associated with hard-to-treat lung and other cancers. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-lung-cancer-cellular-shipping-tumor.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:50:10 EDT news711735782 South Africa introduced a vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV) in public schools in 2014. The program offered the vaccination to fourth-grade girls ages 9 and older. Uptake was high from the start. About 87% of eligible girls received at least one dose during the first year. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-south-africa-hpv-vaccination-girls.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:40:22 EDT news711720168 Among the increasing number of women who survive breast cancer, many older, long-term survivors remain frail. A new study out today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute shows that in a given year, over half of these highly frail survivors had no Medicare home health care. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-older-breast-cancer-survivors-fall.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:20:05 EDT news711722198 Immune cells that normally protect the body from infection can also drive the progression of some early breast cancers, McGill University researchers have found. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-immune-mechanism-discovery-early-breast.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:00:09 EDT news711721261 As a pathologist, Dr. Christopher Owens has spent his career trying to improve his methods of catching precancerous colorectal polyps in patients. If he could catch cases earlier, fewer people would develop colorectal cancer, he said. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-ai-pathologists-lesions-eye.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:40:08 EDT news711720601 Scientists co-led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have identified a potential therapeutic vulnerability in some forms of osteosarcoma. A combination approach described today in the Journal of Experimental Medicine slowed tumor growth and prolonged survival in preclinical models of this pediatric bone cancer. The therapies degraded EP300 (a protein that is co-opted to express oncogenes in many cancers) and inhibited AKT (a well-known cancer drug target), highlighting the combination's clinical potential. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-combination-therapy-reveals-potential-vulnerability.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:20:19 EDT news711720280 People who develop pancreatic cancer experience measurable changes in body composition years before diagnosis that differ from those seen in similar individuals without cancer, according to a Mayo Clinic study led by former Mayo Clinic research fellow Aleksander Bogdanski and published in Pancreatology. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-body-composition-ct-scans-pancreatic.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:20:15 EDT news711716235 Despite advances in early-stage lung cancer treatment, a significant number of patients experience disease recurrence after surgery or initial therapy. A study has now demonstrated that a blood test (liquid biopsy) can reliably detect lingering lung cancer traces even in the earliest clinical stages, long before a tumor is large enough to show up on a scan. This real-time genetic monitoring detailed in an article appearing in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, accurately predicts relapse risk, opening a window for timely, personalized therapeutic interventions. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-blood-lung-cancer-scans.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 13:40:05 EDT news711719326 A new preclinical study suggests that attacking triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) in two ways at once can kill cancer cells, slow tumor growth and limit the cancer's spread. Researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center—Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC—James) developed the approach. The findings could help guide new treatments for this hard-to-treat form of breast cancer. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-smart-combination-triple-negative-breast.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 13:00:01 EDT news711718622 Quercetin is found in citrus fruits, onions and buckwheat and is known for its anti-inflammatory properties. Now researchers at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have investigated how the plant compound could help treat lung cancer. In the lab, experiments showed that quercetin slows the division of lung cancer cells and almost completely stops their migration. The results have appeared in the journal Cell Death Discovery. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-flavonoid-citrus-lung-cancer-cell.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 12:00:23 EDT news711715681 Peritoneal metastases, a form of late-stage cancer that has spread to the lining of the abdominal cavity, carry a median survival of under nine months and currently have few effective treatments. A buildup of fluid in the abdomen known as ascites is known to actively fuel tumor growth, but the molecular contents of this fluid and the mechanisms by which it drives cancer growth have remained poorly understood. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-team-nanobody-tumor-fueling-fluid.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:40:13 EDT news711700108 Neurokinin receptor (NKR) antagonists are already widely used to treat menopausal hot flashes, providing an effective nonhormone treatment. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-explore-potential-role-nkr-antagonists.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:30:13 EDT news711700129 An Australian clinician-led research team has developed a gene-editing platform that could give doctors more control over cell therapies, making them more practical for patients with complex immune conditions. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-clinician-approach-doctors-dial-cell.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 05:52:05 EDT news711694274 A new study led by investigators from Mass General Brigham found routine liver cancer screening to be cost-effective and life-extending for individuals with alcohol-associated cirrhosis, even when their annual risk of developing liver cancer is less than half the risk level guiding current screening recommendations. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-routine-liver-cancer-current-screening.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 05:50:01 EDT news711692714 Researchers at City of Hope have uncovered an immune pathway that may contribute to radiation-related lung damage and have identified a potential strategy to block it. Published in Nature Communications, the insights from the preclinical study could lead to new treatments that prevent radiation from harming healthy lung tissue and improve patients' quality of life. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-immune-trigger-lung.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 05:00:01 EDT news711630003 A new PET imaging approach detected 97.9% of lesions in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), potentially giving clinicians a more complete picture of the location and extent of a patient's disease, according to research presented at the 39th Annual Congress of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM'26). https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-pet-imaging-approach-lesions-common.html Tue, 20 Oct 2026 03:50:01 EDT news711622366 In a comprehensive study of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have shown that the enzyme ADK plays an important role in determining how leukemia cells respond to triciribine. Published in npj Precision Oncology, the study also provides new insights into how the compound works and identifies ADK as a potential biomarker for predicting its effects on leukemia cells. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-higher-adk-track-stronger-triciribine.html Mon, 19 Oct 2026 19:20:07 EDT news711646621