First, STAT has put together a report with an intro from me on Cancer's Transformative Moments. It brings together a lot of our coverage on the biggest developments in oncology over the last year, from the KRAS revolution to AI applications. If you're not a STAT subscriber and don't have access to these stories, it's a great way to buy a bundle of articles and dive in.
In this week's news, scientists have developed about 1000 new cancer models comprising mostly of organoids, and published their work in two papers in Nature this week. These are essentially new cancer cell lines from human samples in three-dimensional cultures, and they're the culmination of a 10-year project called the Human Cancer Models Initiative. 3D models provide certain advantages, like being able to mimic the 3D cell microenvironment more faithfully than 2D models, and make it possible for scientists to conduct more advanced experiments in vitro.
This is an interesting new resource for cancer discovery that caught my eye, and something that looks like it might empower cancer scientists to do more sophisticated research in the future. It’s also interesting to think about this initiative setting up new groundwork for experimentation now, since the Trump administration has signaled a desire to move away from animal testing. The Human Cancer Models Initiative started when Barack Obama was president.
The social media influencer Sydney Towle also passed away from metastatic bile duct cancer on Wednesday. Towle had gained a following of over 1 million on TikTok after her diagnosis, as her social media content became a diary of a cancer patient. She became an advocate for cancer patients and survivors, walking runways for her cause, and also struggled with online detractors who claimed she was a fraud who didn’t actually have cancer. She was 26.
