Latest Research
All publications from the Cancer3.AI database, newest first.
Carcinoma of the Vulva.
Pathak P, et al
A new comprehensive review published in Radiographics examines the full landscape of vulvar cancer — a rare but serious gynecologic malignancy that disproportionately affects postmenopausal women, with squamous cell carcinoma representing more than 90% of all cases. The review details the anatomy of the vulva, the pathogenesis of malignancy, and the characteristic routes of tumor spread, including local infiltration of the urethra, vagina, and anorectum, as well as lymphatic metastasis — identified as the primary and most prognostically significant pathway. The authors systematically outline how multiple imaging modalities — lymphoscintigraphy, MRI, fluorine 18-fluorodeoxyglucose PET/CT, and PET/MRI — each contribute to accurate diagnosis, staging under the updated 2021 FIGO classification, treatment planning, and assessment of treatment response. The review emphasizes that precise imaging information is critical because vulvar cancer staging and surgical planning depend heavily on the extent of local invasion and nodal involvement. This resource equips radiologists and gynecologic oncologists with an up-to-date, practical framework for managing a malignancy that, despite its rarity, carries significant morbidity and mortality when not optimally staged and treated.
Radiographics : a review publication of the Radiological Society of North America, Inc
Source →Acute myeloid leukemia after myeloproliferative neoplasms: Real-world outcomes in the new treatment era in the United States.
Bewersdorf JP, et al
A retrospective study published in Cancer examined real-world outcomes for 392 patients in the United States who developed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) after myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) between 2014 and 2024, a rare but devastating disease progression associated with historically poor survival. Despite the introduction of venetoclax-based lower-intensity therapies that have broadly transformed AML treatment, overall survival remained similarly dismal before and after venetoclax approval, with median survival of approximately 7 months in both eras. Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) emerged as the only potentially curative intervention, with transplant recipients surviving a median of 20.5 months compared to just 5.8 months for those who did not receive a transplant, yet only 15% of patients ultimately underwent this procedure. Both intensive chemotherapy and lower-intensity regimens proved equally effective as bridging strategies to transplant, indicating that treatment selection should be individualized based on patient fitness rather than assumed superiority of one approach. These findings send a clear clinical message: expanding access to transplantation for eligible patients with post-MPN AML is the most urgent priority for improving survival in this difficult-to-treat population.
Cancer
Source →Beyond the Usual Suspects: Emerging Associations Between Epstein-Barr Virus Infection/Infectious Mononucleosis and Cancers.
Muckian MD, et al
A new systematic review published in Reviews in Medical Virology investigated whether Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) — a common herpesvirus already established as a cause of four cancers including Burkitt Lymphoma and Hodgkin Lymphoma — may also be linked to a wider range of malignancies. Researchers searched three major medical databases and identified 33 eligible observational studies, uncovering 13 candidate associations that were rigorously appraised using the GRADE evidence framework. The review highlighted eight cancers across six groups — breast, cervical, leukemia and other hematologic cancers, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), prostate, and testicular — as having some evidence of EBV involvement, with NHL and breast cancer showing the strongest biological plausibility and estimated etiologic fractions ranging from 12.3% to 85.1%. However, the authors identified critical evidence gaps, including a near-total absence of prospective studies, inconsistent viral detection methods, and almost no data on the time elapsed between EBV infection and cancer onset. These findings highlight the urgent need for high-quality prospective research and reinforce the potential long-term public health value of developing an EBV vaccine that could one day protect against a broader spectrum of EBV-associated cancers than previously recognized.
Reviews in medical virology
Source →HISTAI: a valuable dataset with a valuable lesson.
Hewitt KJ, et al
A team of pathologists conducted a rigorous audit of HISTAI, a publicly available dataset of over 112,000 whole slide images intended to support the development of artificial intelligence tools in cancer pathology. Reviewing 328 selected cases, the researchers uncovered substantial problems: only 55% of cases included basic demographic data such as age and sex, and the actual number of unique cases was 44,564 rather than the reported 47,279 due to duplicates and missing entries. In a focused review of 198 cases, 30.3% contained unclear or ambiguous diagnostic conclusions, eight cases carried outright incorrect diagnoses, and concordance between key diagnostic fields was observed in only 20.7% of cases. The dataset also showed a heavy compositional imbalance — nearly half of all cases originated from dermatopathology — and molecular annotations were absent in over 80% of lung and colorectal cancer cases, while none of the 55 brain tumor cases met current World Health Organisation diagnostic criteria. These findings carry direct clinical relevance because AI systems trained on flawed or mislabeled data risk producing unreliable diagnostic outputs that could ultimately harm patients. The study issues a clear warning to the field: large open-source datasets are invaluable, but their use in AI development demands thorough clinical validation and close partnership between computational scientists and specialist pathologists.
The journal of pathology. Clinical research
Source →Right Ventricular Dysfunction in Bone Marrow Transplantation: An Emerging Component of Cancer Therapy-Related Cardiotoxicity.
Fischer-Bacca CO
This publication examines right ventricular (RV) dysfunction as an emerging and underrecognized form of cardiotoxicity in patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation (BMT), a procedure widely used to treat hematologic malignancies and other serious blood disorders. While cancer therapy-related cardiotoxicity has historically focused on left ventricular damage, this work draws attention to the right ventricle as a vulnerable target of intensive conditioning regimens involving high-dose chemotherapy and, in some cases, total body irradiation. The authors discuss how multiple BMT-specific factors — including conditioning chemotherapy agents, graft-versus-host disease, pulmonary complications, and systemic infections — may collectively contribute to RV dysfunction in this patient population. Echocardiography is highlighted as a key diagnostic tool for detecting and monitoring RV dysfunction, enabling clinicians to identify at-risk patients before overt heart failure develops. These findings underscore the need for expanded cardiac surveillance protocols that specifically assess right ventricular function in BMT recipients, potentially improving long-term cardiovascular outcomes in cancer survivors.
Echocardiography (Mount Kisco, N.Y.)
Source →