September 5, 2021 – New York, NY: Memorial Sloan Kettering Photo shoot with patient in Madison Square Park. CREDIT: Karsten Moran for MSK **Image may have been staged or digitally modified

Researchers from UT Southwestern’s Simmons Cancer Center in Texas found that lactate may have an anti-tumor effect when used in conjunction with immune checkpoint inhibitors. They also found that lactate might enhance the impact of a vaccine to fight cancer. The study was conducted on mice. Lactate is a by-product produced after strenuous exercise. If confirmed in human studies, the finding would emphasize exercise’s importance in fighting cancer. The study was published in Nature Communications.

Also, another study by researchers in Denmark showed the impact of exercise on suppressing tumor growth. The authors hypothesized that exercise might strengthen the immune response. This study was also preclinical, done on mice, and additional research in controlled clinical trials is needed to confirm those preliminary results. The study was published in Scientific Reports.

• A new study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis challenged an established view of sugar as a cancer driver because of the cancer cells’ high glucose uptake.. The study demonstrated that cancer cells don’t use all the energy from glucose but discard most of it as waste. Until now, the rate of glucose consumption by cancer cells was used in cancer diagnosis and staging. Also, avoiding access to dietary sugar has been viewed as one of the anti-cancer strategies. The new findings don’t support the role of glucose metabolism as a good therapeutic target in cancer. The study was published in Molecular Cell.
  
• An international group of researchers, funded by Cancer Research UK, have developed a technique called spatial transcriptomics, which allows non-invasive mapping of tumors at a very high-resolution depth. The researchers have created a detailed three-dimensional prostate map, including both healthy and cancerous cell areas. The study also discovered that individual prostate tumors have multiple genetic variations and revealed that healthy tissue in a prostate already had genetic characteristics associated with cancer. The new technique will help study the characteristics and development of cancer on a cellular level. The technique and the finding of the study will have a significant impact on cancer diagnosis and treatment. The study was published in Nature.
  
• Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology developed a revolutionary detection method that shows how cancers metastasize and what stage they are. They created a new type of chip called the Cluster-Well, which can capture circulating tumor cell (CTC) clusters in blood, which are the vehicles of tumor spread. According to the Principal Investigator on the study, this new technology allows circulating tumor cell clusters “virtually in any cancer to be accessed with precision and practicality that has not been possible before.” The study was published in Nature Communications.
  
• A researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health conducted a retrospective study to evaluate the long-term relationship between cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease. The findings supported the pattern already established by the prior research into a short term relationship, that of the inverse relationship between the two conditions: “…dementia patients with cancer history demonstrated better cognition at dementia diagnosis and declined slower than dementia patients without cancer history”. The study was published in Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
  
• Researchers at the University of Southern California have found that exposure to “forever chemicals,” also known as PFAS, which are chemicals used in nonstick cookware and certain types of makeup, is associated with elevated liver cancer risk. The study was published in JHEP Reports.
  

Researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research in London identified a protein, GREM1, essential in regulating pancreatic cancer tumor cells. Their study used two models, a mouse model, and a tumor organoid model. By switching the protein GREM1 on and off, the authors showed that different levels of GREM1 could either produce more aggressive and invasive tumor cells or revert tumor cells to less aggressive forms. While those results are still preliminary, the authors hope their findings could help develop new treatments for pancreatic cancer, which has proven, so far, very difficult to treat. The study was published in Nature.

In a study conducted at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, the authors show that surveillance programs for people at high risk of developing pancreatic cancer are crucial for effectively treating this type of cancer. “The five-year survival to date of patients with a surveillance-detected pancreatic cancer is 73.3%, and median overall survival is 9.8 years, compared with 1.5 years for patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer outside surveillance.” The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.