The hottest Cancer Research Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Health & Wellness Topics

Did RFK just take away your cancer treatment?

Noahpinion • 35647 implied HN points • 08 Aug 25
🏥 Health Politics Cancer Research
  1. Cancer rates are rising, but new treatments, especially mRNA vaccines, show promise in making cancers manageable diseases instead of death sentences.
  2. Recent government decisions have halted funding for mRNA vaccine research, which could slow down advancements in cancer treatment.
  3. This political battle against mRNA technology may cost many lives as the advancements that could help fight cancer are delayed.

Ivermectin Squares Off in a New War on Cancer

RESCUE with Michael Capuzzo • 15959 implied HN points • 31 Jan 24
🏥 Health & Wellness Cancer Research
  1. Ivermectin and other generic drugs are being explored for cancer treatment by medical pioneers.
  2. Physicians are attempting to make cancer care more effective, affordable, and less painful using safe, off-patent drugs.
  3. Generic drugs like ivermectin and mebendazole are showing promise in inhibiting cancer cell growth and inducing cell death in various cancer types.

Stoppard and chemotherapy

The Common Reader • 3012 implied HN points • 02 Dec 25
🏥 Health Politics Cancer Research
  1. Tom Stoppard's play 'Arcadia' inspired new ways to think about breast cancer treatment. It introduced concepts from chaos theory that explain cancer growth more accurately.
  2. The realization that cancer cells may spread throughout the body before diagnosis led to the development of adjuvant systemic chemotherapy. This treatment has improved survival rates significantly.
  3. Although Stoppard's impact on cancer treatment wasn't widely known, his work contributed to saving many lives through its influence on medical practice.

Cancer Science in On a Tear

Ground Truths • 7436 implied HN points • 10 Nov 24
🏥 Health & Wellness Cancer Research
  1. Recent research has made great progress in understanding cancer, revealing that many cancer cells may come from multiple clones. This helps explain how cancer develops and spreads.
  2. Studies are showing how powerful visual mapping of tumors can be, especially for identifying how different immune responses affect the growth of cancers like breast and ovarian cancer.
  3. New insights into circular DNA in cancer cells are revealing its role in tumor growth and resistance to treatments. There is even potential for new therapies targeting this DNA to combat cancer.
Get a weekly roundup of the best Substack posts, by hacker news affinity:

Why Biology and Cancer?

Solve Cancer in 365 days • 39 implied HN points • 27 Aug 24
🏥 Health & Wellness Cancer Research
  1. Aging and illness like cancer are tough realities that many people face in life. There's a strong desire to find better solutions to these problems.
  2. It's important to seek meaning and purpose in life beyond just money and status. Finding something impactful can reignite passion and motivation.
  3. Learning about biology and unconventional approaches to it can open new pathways to understanding health issues. This exploration could lead to breakthroughs in how we view and treat diseases like cancer.

agent.bio

LatchBio • 63 implied HN points • 09 Dec 25
🔬 Science Cancer Research
  1. An interactive sandbox hosts natural-language agents tailored to five major spatial biology platforms (Takara Seeker, Vizgen MERFISH, AtlasXOmics DBiT-seq, 10X Xenium, and 10X Visium) so scientists can run end-to-end spatial analyses.
  2. Agents operate in two modes—"proactive" for automated runs and "step-by-step" for frequent check-ins—and users should prefer step-by-step for important work because the sandboxes were built for specific datasets and may not generalize perfectly.
  3. Video demos show these agents can ingest raw outputs, run QC, clustering, differential tests, and annotate spatial features across diverse biological problems, and the roadmap focuses on benchmarks, purpose-built infrastructure, and tech-specific heuristics to make agents reliable for scientific decisions.

F-Prime: Alex Pasteur, PhD

dneel • 275 implied HN points • 22 Jan 24
🏥 Health & Wellness Cancer Research
  1. Destroying tumors while sparing healthy tissue is a key challenge in cancer research.
  2. Radioisotopes show promising potential in selectively attacking tumors.
  3. The radiopharmaceutical space, though historically lagging, is now gaining traction with new developments and interest from large pharmaceutical companies.

Children of the Revolution

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1850 implied HN points • 22 Feb 24
🚌 Education Cancer Research
  1. Teaching Black History Month to kids through a Black Lives Matter coloring book has sparked controversy and concerns among parents regarding the content being taught in schools.
  2. The importance of teaching actual black history, like the stories of the Tuskegee Airmen, as opposed to contemporary political ideologies in schools.
  3. The issue of fraud in cancer research highlights the lack of transparency in data sharing within the scientific community, leading to questions about the integrity of medical research and the need for more stringent protocols.

IARC: Can't Be Aspar-Tamed

KCKlatt’s Substack • 219 implied HN points • 02 Jul 23
🏥 Health Politics Cancer Research
  1. Aspartame has been classified as 'possibly carcinogenic' by the IARC, meaning there's some evidence it might cause cancer, but it's not conclusive. This classification can create confusion about actual cancer risks.
  2. It's important to understand the difference between hazard and risk. Just because something is identified as a hazard doesn’t mean it will definitely cause harm in normal consumption amounts.
  3. IARC's ruling stirs up fear without clear guidance on safe consumption levels. Consumers need clear communication about risks when it comes to food additives like aspartame.

The Health of our People

A Biologist's Guide to Life • 40 implied HN points • 19 Jul 25
🏥 Health & Wellness Cancer Research
  1. Facing health challenges can bring families together and create strong bonds. It's important to support each other during tough times.
  2. Using scientific knowledge can empower people when dealing with serious health issues. Exploring how things work can lead to better understanding and hope.
  3. Finding new ways to approach treatment, like using diet to help with chemotherapy, can offer new possibilities for improving health outcomes.

RERF experts claim their bomb survivor solid cancer mortality data is non-linear

Gordian Knot News • 87 implied HN points • 08 Jan 25
🔬 Science Cancer Research
  1. RERF experts found that solid cancer mortality data from bomb survivors shows a non-linear pattern. This means that higher radiation doses lead to differing effects on cancer rates than previously thought.
  2. They noticed an upward curve in cancer risk among both men and women, but the effect was more significant for women. This is important to understand how radiation impacts different sexes.
  3. The researchers also highlighted a 'High Dose Effect' where fewer cancers seem to occur at very high radiation doses. This challenges some existing theories about radiation and cancer risk.

Broad-Spectrum Cancer Treatments

Rough Diamonds • 37 implied HN points • 03 Jun 25
🏥 Health & Wellness Cancer Research
  1. There is a growing belief that broad-spectrum cancer treatments could be possible since many cancers share common traits. This means a single treatment could potentially help a lot of people instead of just a small group.
  2. Recent discoveries show that certain substances and methods might give us new ways to identify and target cancer cells across different types of cancer. This can lead to more effective treatments for a wider range of patients.
  3. To find these new treatments efficiently, researchers need to work together and share information from different types of cancer. A structured research program could help speed up the discovery of these promising therapies.

I went to the world's biggest Cancer conference

That Damn Optimist • 29 implied HN points • 09 Jun 25
🏥 Health & Wellness Cancer Research
  1. The conference was huge, with around 50,000 people attending, making it a bustling environment with a lot to navigate. It was easy to get lost while trying to find my way among oncologists, researchers, and exhibitors.
  2. Pharmaceutical companies had a huge presence, advertising their products everywhere and showcasing impressive booths. This made it hard to separate scientific information from marketing, but the food and snacks provided became a fun topic of conversation.
  3. The talks were really informative and focused on new scientific advancements, which was refreshing. Presenters openly discussed the limitations of their studies, making the discussions feel more honest and engaging compared to other conferences.

Praetorian PTEN: Protecting Cells from Cancer

Holodoxa • 39 implied HN points • 24 Aug 23
🔬 Science Cancer Research
  1. PTEN acts as a crucial barrier against cancer growth by regulating cell growth and proliferation.
  2. The structure of PTEN, spanning 105 thousand DNA base pairs on chromosome ten, reveals its functional capabilities and how it interacts with cellular components.
  3. PTEN's loss of function, often due to mutation, influences the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway, impacting cellular signaling and potentially leading to tumorigenesis.

mRNA vaccines: let's be sick a whole lot less and maybe cure cancer

Everything Is An Emergency • 112 HN points • 05 Mar 24
🏥 Health & Wellness Cancer Research
  1. Developing drugs that target pathways triggered by pathogens can lead to faster, more effective treatments for various diseases, even when the specific pathogen is unknown.
  2. mRNA vaccines are faster, cheaper, and more flexible to make than traditional vaccines, offering a promising future in preventing infections and addressing persistent pathogens like herpes.
  3. mRNA vaccines have the potential to be used as personalized cancer vaccines by instructing the body's cells to create proteins that trigger an immune response against cancer cells, showing great promise in cancer treatment and immunotherapy.

Letter from Harvard

Natural Selections • 10 implied HN points • 20 May 25
🔬 Science Cancer Research
  1. The end of federal funding for research can hurt students, especially those from low-income families, making it harder for them to contribute to important medical advancements.
  2. A lot of scientific research relies on federal money, and cuts can disrupt ongoing projects and harm future innovation, making it a complex issue beyond just budget cuts.
  3. Having more people involved in science is great, but it raises questions about how to fund it fairly. We need to ensure that decisions on funding are made wisely and not based on popularity.

Metastatic Cancer Treatment Since 2010: The Success Stories

Rough Diamonds • 19 implied HN points • 04 Nov 24
🏥 Health & Wellness Cancer Research
  1. Metastatic cancer is often very serious and many people diagnosed don't survive long. However, some treatments are making progress in helping patients achieve long-term remission.
  2. New treatments, especially immunotherapies, are showing promise in making metastatic cancer disappear in some patients. This is a big deal because it used to be very rare.
  3. There's still a lot of potential to improve cancer treatments. Researchers are exploring many different strategies, and exciting possibilities are on the horizon to help more patients.

Unbiased mapping of cereblon neosubstrate landscape by high-throughput proteomics

Axial • 14 implied HN points • 24 Nov 24
🔬 Science Cancer Research
  1. A new method helps find powerful compounds that can target hard-to-reach proteins for drug development. These compounds are called molecular glue degraders, and they can help break down unwanted proteins in the body.
  2. The study found many new targets for these compounds, including some that haven't been studied much before. This expands the potential for developing new treatments for diseases like cancer.
  3. The researchers created a process that combines different scientific techniques, making it easier to design and improve these drugs. This means we might see more precise and effective medicines in the future.

VSRF LIVE TONIGHT: Episode 161 - Drs. Angus Dalgleish and William Makis - DNA Contamination and the Cancer Connection

Steve Kirsch's newsletter • 1 implied HN point • 23 Jan 25
🏥 Health Politics Cancer Research
  1. There will be a live discussion about a possible link between DNA contamination in the Pfizer vaccine and rising cancer rates, especially in younger people.
  2. Dr. Angus Dalgleish and Dr. William Makis will share their insights, including concerns about vaccine safety and new cancer treatments they are using.
  3. The event encourages people to mark their calendars and share the information widely, as it seeks to raise awareness on important health issues.