According to recent reports, the success rate of targeted therapy directed by “actionable mutations” found in tumour DNA is rather low (10 to 20%). Interesting attempts have been made to improve this by establishing mouse ...

The “liquid biopsy” approach shows promise for characterization and monitoring of cancer during treatment; however a blood-based detection test for “high-risk” but asymptomatic individuals, recently introduced by Pathway ...

The recently announced “Cancer moonshot” may be greeted with scepticism: the previous “War on cancer” (1971) was not very successful. However the current plan seems well targeted, with emphasis not only on research investment ...

A newly established company called Grail and spun out from Illumina promises to develop a “liquid biopsy” test suitable for asymptomatic cancer detection and general screening. While the necessary sensitivity may be ...

Non-invasive prenatal testing is becoming commonplace, but, in addition, other tests using only a blood sample are being developed and will have a significant impact, notably in oncology.

The SEER site set up by the NCI provides an opportunity to generate ad hoc graphs of cancer statistics over the last forty years, makes it possible to examine commonly held assumptions such as a “cancer epidemic” and allows ...

The heterogeneity of tumours is now beginning to be documented precisely by single-cell new-generation sequencing. Recently published results on breast tumours show that each of the cells analysed displays a unique pattern ...

Since the completion of the first human DNA sequence, genomic approaches have penetrated into cancer research and therapy: first through expression profiling for diagnostic, prognostic and predictive purposes, then by ...