Even treated with the most advanced therapies, patients with glioblastoma - an aggressive brain cancer - typically survive less than two years after diagnosis. Efforts to treat this cancer with the latest immunotherapies have been unsuccessful, likely because glioblastoma cells have few, if any, natural targets for the immune system to attack. In a cell-based study, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have forced glioblastoma cells to display immune system targets, potentially making them visible to immune cells and newly vulnerable to immunotherapies.

Scientists have uncovered how certain E. coli bacteria in the gut promote colon cancer by binding to intestinal cells and releasing a DNA-damaging toxin. The study, published in Nature, sheds light on a new approach to potentially reduce cancer risk. The study was performed by the teams of Prof. Lars Vereecke (VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research) and Prof. Han Remaut (VIB-VUB Center for Structural Biology).

Professor Meritxell Huch receives this year's Otto Bayer Award. The Otto Bayer Award is presented alternating with the Hansen Family Award every second year. The award recognizes leading scientists working in German-speaking countries for ground-breaking research in chemistry or biochemistry. The award with a prize money of EUR 75,000 was generously established in 1984 by a provision in the will of Professor Otto Bayer, a former Director of Research at Bayer AG.

As the hunt for effective cancer therapies intensifies, some scientists are turning back to look at old drugs in a new light. The anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine is one such drug that has been "repurposed" to fight cancer. Despite its effectiveness at blocking the resupply of needed resources to cancer cells, clinical trial results have been disappointing, in part because cancer cells eventually become resistant to the drug.

"As tumors grow very quickly, consume a lot of oxygen and their vascular growth can't necessarily keep pace, they often contain areas that are poorly supplied with oxygen," explains Johannes Karges. These areas, often in the center of the tumor, frequently survive treatment with conventional drugs, so that the tumor initially shrinks but doesn't disappear completely. This is because the therapeutic agents require oxygen to be effective.