Nature
Nature is the world's leading multidisciplinary science journal. The big cancer biology discoveries land here: cancer genome atlases, tumour evolution, new drug targets and early first-in-human results.
Nature appears weekly. In cancer it publishes the discovery papers that later become drugs and tests (KRAS G12C inhibition, Ostrem 2013), large sequencing consortia (TCGA, PCAWG, TRACERx), the mRNA neoantigen vaccine and menin-inhibitor first-in-human reports, and foundational tools such as AlphaFold. Hybrid since 2021 with an open-access option; news and comment pages shape research policy debates.
Revumenib proved that a transcriptional dependency, rather than a kinase, can be drugged in leukaemia, opening treatment for two genetic subgroups that together cover roughly a third of AML plus most infant ALL. It is now approved and is being combined with venetoclax-azacitidine and intensive chemotherapy in front-line trials. Single-agent remissions are often short without transplant.
Pancreatic cancer was thought to be immunologically inert because of its low mutation burden; this study showed that with the right vaccine platform its few neoantigens can still be targeted. It is the strongest human evidence so far that personalised cancer vaccines can generate durable, tumour-specific immunity, and it justifies the randomised trials now running in pancreatic cancer and melanoma. Benefit is not yet proven, because responders may simply have had more immunogenic tumours.
Relapse after surgery is driven by particular subclones that can be identified in the primary tumour and tracked in blood, which argues for evolution-aware adjuvant strategies. The pollution finding reframes carcinogenesis: some agents promote already-mutant cells rather than causing mutations.
The shape of nearly every protein is now available to any researcher in seconds instead of years, which shortens the path from a cancer target to a designed molecule. It does not by itself produce drugs: binding pockets, dynamics and cellular context still need experiment.
The most frequently mutated oncogene in cancer stopped being undruggable, and patients with KRAS G12C lung and bowel cancers now have targeted pills. The approach, exploiting a mutation-created chemical handle and an inactive-state pocket, has become a template for other hard targets.
Co-discovered that BRCA-deficient cancers die when PARP is blocked, the idea behind an entire drug class.
Co-created the DNA methylation classifier that changed how brain tumours are diagnosed worldwide.
Co-invented the CAPP-Seq method for reading tumour DNA in blood and used it to track lymphoma and lung cancer.
Bruce Stillman discovered how DNA replication starts, the process cancer cells push into overdrive.
Leads TRACERx, the study that follows lung cancers as they evolve, and showed how air pollution can trigger lung cancer without new mutations.
Head and neck oncologist who helped define the genomic subtypes of HPV-positive and HPV-negative disease.
Co-discovered the synthetic lethality between PARP inhibition and BRCA loss that underlies PARP inhibitor therapy.
Found that leukaemias depend on the chromatin reader BRD4, launching BET inhibitors, and mapped transcriptional addictions in sarcoma.
Costas Lyssiotis shows how pancreatic tumours feed off their surrounding cells and how to cut the supply.
Crystal Mackall is a cell therapy pioneer whose team brought GD2 CAR-T to children with lethal brain tumours.
Co-discovered EGFR mutations in lung cancer and pioneered circulating tumour cell technology.
Treated the first adult CLL patients with CAR-T and reported a decade of durable remissions.
Led the DRUP trial giving off-label targeted drugs by genomic match, and developed organoid-based testing.
Breast cancer geneticist who led SOLAR-1 and the SAFIR precision-medicine trials; ESMO President 2025-2026.
Wrote the algorithms (MuTect, MutSig, ABSOLUTE) that most cancer genome studies use to find mutations.
MD Anderson's chief scientist, a cell-cycle biologist who ran drug discovery in industry before leading the centre's research.
Discovered cancer stem cells, showing leukaemia is driven by a rare population of self-renewing cells.
The chemist whose lab found the hidden pocket in KRAS G12C that made the 'undruggable' target druggable.
Louis Staudt defined the molecular subtypes of large B-cell lymphoma that guide targeted therapy.
Radiation oncologist who showed a blood test can detect leftover lung cancer months before scans.
Olivier Delattre discovered the EWS-FLI1 fusion that defines Ewing sarcoma.
Nobel laureate who discovered how cyclin-dependent kinases control cell division, and founding director of the Crick.
Cancer geneticist who explained why BRAF inhibitors fail in colorectal cancer, leading to the BEACON combination.
Proposed cancer immunoediting and showed neoantigens are the targets of checkpoint immunotherapy.
Roman Thomas is a cancer genomicist who mapped the genomes of small-cell lung cancer.
Shows how diet reprogrammes intestinal stem cells and immunity to change colorectal cancer risk.
Paediatric oncologist whose genomic work redefined childhood brain tumours into molecular subgroups.
Timothy Ley led the first whole-genome sequencing of a cancer, an AML genome, in 2008.
Immunologist who showed PD-L1 on tumours suppresses T cells and linked interferon to ferroptosis.
Led CheckMate 649, which made immunotherapy plus chemotherapy the first-line standard for gastric cancer, and the pembrolizumab-trastuzumab combination in HER2-positive disease.