International Research Chemistry Awards

  Surgery may not be the best next course of treatment for patients with early-stage breast cancer who had a complete response to neoadjuvant (pre-surgical) chemotherapy and standard radiation treatment, according to new data from researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Five-year results from the Phase II trial, published today in JAMA Oncology, revealed that breast cancer still had not returned in patients who had a pathologic complete response (pCR) after chemotherapy and radiation, without surgery. After a median follow-up of 55.4 months, each of the 31 patients with a pCR remained disease free, and the overall survival rate was 100%. The findings, which also are being presented today at the Society of Surgical Oncology 2025 Annual Meeting, suggest that some patients may be able to avoid breast surgery , which has long been part of standard treatment. This is the first modern prospective trial of surgery omission in patients with early-stage breast c...

  Researchers from the Francis Crick Institute, UCL, Gustave Roussy and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), have discovered that expansion of mutant blood cells, a phenomenon linked to aging, can be found in cancerous tumors, and this is associated with worse outcomes for patients. Understanding the biological interface of age-related genetic changes and diseases of ageing, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, is important to develop preventative therapies for a growing proportion of the population. Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) is a condition where blood stem cells accumulate mutations over time, influenced by both ageing and external environmental factors. CHIP has already been shown to be associated with risk of age-related disorders, such as cardiovascular disease, but the impact of these genetic changes on solid cancer evolution hasn't been thoroughly investigated. Work published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, is a detail...

  Cancer is one of the leading causes of death globally, with nearly 20 million new cases and 9.7 million deaths in 2022. Early detection plays a crucial role in reducing cancer-related morbidity and mortality, but many cancers are diagnosed at advanced stages due to subtle early symptoms and lack of awareness. Liquid biopsy, a non-invasive approach that examines circulating tumor components in body fluids, has emerged as a groundbreaking technology in cancer detection. This review presents the advancements in liquid biopsy, its clinical applications, and the challenges and opportunities it presents, especially for early cancer diagnosis. Liquid biopsy components and techniques Liquid biopsy encompasses the analysis of several tumor-derived components found in body fluids, including cell-free DNA (cfDNA), circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), circulating tumor cells (CTCs), and exosomes. These biomarkers are released into the bloodstream by tumors and can provide valuable molecular insigh...

  In an effort to explain a modern medical mystery, an international team of researchers led by the University of California San Diego has identified a potential microbial culprit behind the alarming rise in early-onset colorectal cancer: a bacterial toxin called colibactin. Produced by certain strains of Escherichia coli that reside in the colon and rectum, colibactin is a toxin capable of altering DNA. Now, scientists report that exposure to colibactin in early childhood imprints a distinct genetic signature on the DNA of colon cells-one that may increase the risk of developing colorectal cancer before the age of 50. The new study, published on April 23 in Nature, analyzed 981 colorectal cancer genomes from patients with both early- and late-onset disease across 11 countries with varying colorectal cancer risk levels. The findings show that colibactin leaves behind specific patterns of DNA mutations that were 3.3 times more common in early-onset cases (specifically in adults unde...

  New research to be presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2025, Malaga, Spain, 11-14 May) and published in The Journal of Internal Medicine shows that, in survivors of breast cancer, having an unhealthy metabolic profile or so called ' metabolic syndrome' increases the risk of breast cancer recurrence by 69%, and subsequent breast cancer mortality by 83%. The study is by Dr Sixten Harborg, Department of Oncology, Aarhus University/Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark. and Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, MA, USA, and colleagues. Metabolic syndrome was characterized according to the American Heart Association, which includes the presence of three out of five abnormal findings among the risk factors: high blood pressure, high triglycerides (blood fats), low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or 'good' cholesterol, high fasting glucose (blood sugar), and central or abdominal obesity (a waist circumference of m...

  Bacteria naturally present in the human intestine, known as the gut microbiota, can transform cholesterol-derived bile acids into powerful metabolites that strengthen anti-cancer immunity by blocking androgen signaling, according to a preclinical study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The study was published on April 15 in Cell. "I was very surprised by our findings. As far as I know, no one has previously discovered molecules like these bile acids that can interact with the androgen receptor in this way," said co-senior author Dr. Chun-Jun Guo, an associate professor of immunology in medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and a scientist at the Jill Roberts Institute for Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Wen-Bing Jin, formerly a postdoctoral associate, and Dr. Leyi Xiao, a current postdoctoral associate in Dr. Guo's lab, are the co-first authors of the study. Dr. David Artis, director of the Jill Robe...

  Radiation from imaging could lead to lung, breast and other future cancers, with 10-fold increased risk  for babies. CT scans may account for 5% of all cancers annually, according to a new study out of UC San Francisco that cautions against overusing and overdosing CTs. The danger is greatest for infants, followed by children and adolescents. But adults also are at risk, since they are the most likely to get scans. Nearly 103,000 cancers are predicted to result from the 93 million CTs that were performed in 2023 alone. This is 3 to 4 times more than previous assessments, the authors said. The study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, appears April 14 in JAMA Internal Medicine. "CT can save lives, but its potential harms are often overlooked," said first author Rebecca Smith-Bindman, MD, a UCSF radiologist and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences. "Given the large volume of CT use in the Uni...

  In a recent study in the journal Communication Biology, researchers employed a novel combined Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to identify 62 plasma proteins (including 9 with robust support, 13 with medium support, and 40 with limited support) associated with breast cancer and its Luminal A or B subtypes. Unlike previous approaches using only a single MR analysis on limited cohorts, this research used both two-sample MR (TSMR) and summary-data-based MR (SMR) on a cohort of nearly 250,000 participants. Findings from both human models revealed 9 robust and 13 medium-confidence plasma protein genes. Robustly associated proteins include: 1. Breast cancer – ULK3, ASIP, CSK, TLR1; 2. Luminal A – ADH5, ULK3, SARS2, UBE2N; 3. Luminal B – PEX14. Six of the nine robust proteins were supported by murine phenotype data, confirming their relevance to immune and hematopoietic systems. However, the reduction in CSK and ULK3 expression in cancer versus healthy tissue was observed in human ...

  Rates of colorectal cancer (CRC) diagnoses dropped during and shortly after Hurricanes Irma and Maria and the COVID-19 pandemic in Puerto Rico, according to a recent analysis. However, late-stage diagnoses eventually exceeded expectations, suggesting that limited access to cancer screening services due to these disasters likely hindered timely CRC diagnoses . The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. During disasters,  medical services may be delayed or inaccessible due to damaged infrastructure, overburdened health care facilities, or shortages of medical personnel. This can lead to late diagnoses, interruptions in treatment, and an overall worsening of survival and other health outcomes for patients. To assess the impact of Hurricanes Irma and Maria and the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions on CRC diagnoses, investigators analyzed 2012–2021 data from the Puerto Rico Central Cancer Registry, which has been collecti...

  A new study has unveiled when chronic myeloid leukemia, a type of cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow, arises in life and how fast it grows. Researchers reveal explosive growth rates of cancerous cells years before diagnosis and variation in these rates of growth between patients. Such rapid growth rates had previously not been observed in most other cancers. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators used whole genome sequencing to study when BCR::ABL1 – an abnormal fusion of the different genes called BCR and ABL1, which is known to cause chronic myeloid leukemia. The team investigated when BCR::ABL1 first arises in a blood cell and how quickly these cells with this genetic change then multiply and expand to lead to a diagnosis of a type of leukemia. The research, published today (9 April) in Nature, contributes to the scientific understanding of how strong this abnormal fusion gene is in its ability to drive cancer . Chronic myeloid leuke...

  A new, error-corrected method for detecting cancer from blood samples is much more sensitive and accurate than prior methods and may be useful for monitoring disease status in patients following treatment, according to a study by Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Genome Center investigators. The method, based on whole-genome sequencing of DNA, also represents an important step toward the goal of routine blood test-based screening for early cancer detection. In the study, published Apr. 11 in Nature Methods, the researchers benchmarked the cancer -detection performance of a new commercial sequencing platform from Ultima Genomics. They demonstrated that a low-cost platform such as this one enables a very high "depth" of coverage—a measure of the sequencing data quality—allowing investigators to detect extremely low concentrations of circulating tumor DNA . Adding an error-correcting method greatly improved the accuracy of the technique. Blood-test-based "liquid biopsy...