Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Rising rates of early-onset oestrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer in women without genetic risk suggest a shift in disease biology. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) may accelerate tissue ageing, destabilize epigenetic regulation and impair immune surveillance. Chronic and cumulative EDC exposure may induce field cancerization in the breast, warranting urgent attention from researchers, regulators and public health leaders.
Recent multidimensional molecular profiling advances have begun to match the complexity of cancer, revolutionizing our appreciation of tumours as complex ecosystems. In this Comment, Grünwald and Khokha call for a shift in comprehension of tumour tissue organization; while tumour tissues are heterogeneous, they are not disordered, and, like all multicellular entities, they propagate their functions via a considerable level of self-organization.
Digital twins are virtual representations that evolve over time with new data inputs. In this Comment, Asghar and Chung describe cancer applications of digital twins that include the integration of molecular information and individual drug responses of patients, and explain how they can inform individualized treatment, accelerate drug development through clinical trial simulation and enable the exploration of multiscale relationships in the entire human body to drive new therapeutic discoveries.
In this Tools of the Trade article, Yahaya A. Yabo describes the development of neuropathology spatial transcriptomic analysis (NePSTA), an artificial intelligence (AI)-based tool to identify and map unique spatial patterns within tissues.
In a study published in Nature Immunology, Fuentes et al. demonstrate that the pre-T cell receptor (TCR) is expressed in leukaemia-initiating cells in patients with T cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, and that targeting it can inhibit tumour progression.
In a recent study published in Nature Genetics, Kübler, Nardone et al. analysed the mechanisms underlying tamoxifen-associated uterine cancer and identified PI3K pathway activation as a key non-genetic driver.
In this Review, Easwaran and Weeraratna outline how ageing leads to epigenetic alterations in the tissue microenvironment, enhancing clonal expansion of mutations and ultimately increasing cancer risk.
Ageing reshapes immune composition, function and regenerative capacity, with profound effects on tumour immunity, cancer progression and treatment outcomes. In this Review, Dolan and colleagues examine how age-resolved immunoprofiling, insights from ageing haematopoiesis and preclinical modelling are uncovering immune ageing dynamics and therapeutic challenges — revealing new opportunities to optimize cancer therapy across diverse age groups.
In this Perspective, de Magalhães explores the evolutionary relationship between cancer and ageing, proposing that the need to minimize cancer risk early in life may contribute to tissue degeneration later on, representing a trade-off that constrains the evolution of longer lifespans.
