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Oncology
15th Jan, 2026
The Lancet
In adult patients with newly diagnosed or recurrent diffuse glioma, more extensive resection is associated with longer progression-free and overall survival. Intraoperative mapping techniques are used to safely increase the extent of resection by locating, monitoring, and preserving the function of potentially infiltrated brain during surgery. However, there is no consensus on the indications for intraoperative mapping, the optimal functional tests to be used intraoperatively, or intraoperative decision making.
Independent review facility-assessed progression-free survival and overall survival were significantly better in the tiragolumab plus atezolizumab and chemotherapy group compared with chemotherapy alone for unresectable locally advanced, unresectable recurrent, or metastatic oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma. These data support the rationale for exploring dual checkpoint inhibition added to chemotherapy for this group of patients with a high unmet need.
Cancer vaccines represent a transformative frontier in oncology, offering the potential to elicit durable and specific immune responses against tumour-associated or tumour-specific antigens. This technology has the potential to treat established malignancy, reduce tumour relapse, and even prevent cancer formation—improving survival outcomes. Advances in neoantigen discovery, mRNA vaccine platforms, and personalised immunotherapy have substantially enhanced the feasibility and efficacy of cancer vaccines across various malignancies.
On Nov 19, 2025, the UK Government launched the first Men's Health Strategy for England. The policy paper noted that, over the past decade, healthy life expectancy for men has fallen by 1·5 years and that men in parts of the country with the most poverty die on average 10 years earlier than men in parts with the least poverty. Men are more likely than women to smoke, drink alcohol, or use drugs, and be overweight or have obesity. 19% of deaths in men over 35 years are attributable to smoking, seven percentage points higher than women in the same age group, and 68% of deaths from liver disease are in men.
On Nov 21, 2025, a ministerial media release announced a new legislation passed through Australian Parliament, expanding presumptive workers' compensation coverage for firefighters diagnosed with cancer. The new legislation extends the current list of 12 recognised malignancies in New South Wales, Australia, to include ten new cancers, including primary site lung, pancreatic, thyroid, and skin cancers. Reproductive cancers including cervical, ovarian, uterine, vaginal, vulval, and penile were also included.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a public–private global health partnership with the goal of increasing access to immunisation in developing countries, is celebrating after working with lower-income countries to reach a key target to vaccinate millions of girls with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for cervical cancer in mid-November, 2025—6 weeks ahead of its original 3-year target.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is causing more than 35 000 deaths per year across Europe. According to estimates by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), based on 2024 data submitted by all countries in the EU and European Economic Area, Europe has met only one of five targets set to tackle the issue.
New research by Andrew T Chan (Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA) and colleagues published in JAMA Oncology shows that younger women (aged ≤50 years) who eat the highest proportions of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are at a 45% increased risk of developing bowel polyps that can later develop into colorectal cancer. UPFs are novel branded products made from inexpensive industrial ingredients such as hydrogenated oils, protein isolates or glucose or fructose syrup, and cosmetic food additives (including dyes, artificial sweeteners, and emulsifiers).
Tang L-L, Huang C-L, Lin S-J, et al. Primary target volume delineation for radiotherapy in nasopharyngeal carcinoma: CSTRO, CACA, CSCO, HNCIG, ESTRO, and ASTRO guidelines and contouring atlas. Lancet Oncol 2025; 26: e477–87—In this Policy Review, the first sentence of Recommendation 3.3 should have read, “Posteriorly delineate the anterior third of the clivus (the cortex) if uninvolved (usually for T1 and T2 disease) and include the whole clivus (inferior, posterior column, up to the posterior clinoid process) for any clival involvement (usually for T3 and T4 disease).” This correction has been made to the online version as of Dec 22, 2025.
Ma D, Price K, Moore E, et al. De-escalated adjuvant radiotherapy versus standard adjuvant treatment for human papillomavirus-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (MC1675): a phase 3, open-label, randomised controlled trial. Lancet Oncol 2025; 26: 1227–39—In table 1 of this Article, the number of participants in each AJCC 8th edition N stage and AJCC 7th edition N stage at baseline have been corrected. This correction has been made as of Dec 22, 2025.
van der Lei S, Puijk RS, Dijkstra M, et al. Thermal ablation versus surgical resection of small-size colorectal liver metastases (COLLISION): an international, randomised, controlled, phase 3 non-inferiority trial. Lancet Oncol 2025; 26: 187–99—In this Article, all data labelled as IQR in the Summary, table 1 legend, and Results should have been labelled as range; figure 2 has also been updated. These corrections have been made to the online version as of Dec 22, 2025.
We thank John P Neoptolemos and colleagues for their letter. They state that the ESPAC-1 trial set the standard of care for adjuvant therapy in resectable pancreatic cancer.1 However, ESPAC-1 set the standard of care for resected pancreatic cancer, including only those patients who had no occult metastases at surgery, underwent a resection, recovered from surgery, had no early recurrence, and remained fit for adjuvant treatment. In the adjuvant group of nine randomised controlled trials comparing neoadjuvant with adjuvant therapy, only 80% of all patients with resectable pancreatic cancer became patients with resected pancreatic cancer.
We congratulate Quisette P Janssen and colleagues on the phase 3 PREOPANC-2 trial.1 PREOPANC-2 was the successor of the phase 3 PREOPANC-1, which showed improved overall survival following pre-operative chemoradiotherapy and surgery versus surgery for patients with anatomically resectable or borderline resectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. In light of the superiority for post-operative FOLFIRINOX versus gemcitabine and multiple rationales for pre-operative multi-agent chemotherapy, PREOPANC-2 tested the hypothesis that overall survival was longer following pre-operative FOLFIRINOX versus the gemcitabine-based chemoradiotherapy PREOPANC-1 approach.
The ESPAC1 and ESPAC1-Plus trials in 2001 and 2004 respectively established surgery and six months of adjuvant chemotherapy as the standard of care for empirically resectable pancreatic cancer. This protocol was confirmed repeatedly over the last 25 years, leading to an enormous increase in the volume of patients being treated with surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy. The development of improved cancer treatment strategies requires that randomised controlled trials that aimed to be practice changing should include the best current standard of care as the control group.
In September, 2025, The Lancet Oncology published results of the phase 3 MC1675 study on de-escalated adjuvant radiotherapy versus standard adjuvant treatment for human papillomavirus-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma.1 After publication, the corresponding author alerted us to numerical errors present in table 1 caused by a mistranscription of the number of patients in each category of nodal staging by AJCC 7th edition staging and AJCC 8th edition staging. These errors did not affect other data, findings, or interpretation in the paper and we have thus corrected the online version as of Dec 22, 2025.
What's New: Drugs
7th Apr, 2026
FDA
Center,
Research
8th Apr, 2026
What's New: Vaccines, Blood and Biologics
