News and Events

New Milestones publication now available

Every year, CCR makes remarkable contributions to the understanding, detection, treatment and prevention of cancer. This digital-only issue of our annual publication, Milestones, features 13 of our top scientific advances from the previous year. These discoveries fall everywhere on the spectrum from basic science to clinical research, ranging from a deeper understanding of the gut-liver axis and how bacteria move, to results and stories from three promising clinical trials. Our researchers have developed AI models to predict when tumors will respond to treatments, built scaffolds of biomaterials to assist with drug delivery, investigated how mitochondria function in healthy and diseased liver cells, and more.

Ruth Nussinov elected to the National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences elected Ruth Nussinov, Ph.D., Senior Investigator in the Cancer Innovation Laboratory, as a member of their organization. She is being recognized for her groundbreaking achievements as a computational structural biologist.

Offering “life-sustaining” treatment without compromising quality of life

When Alison James received her diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma, she was alarmed by the side effects associated with the standard of care. She traveled to the NIH Clinical Center for a CCR clinical trial that offered treatment with less impact to her quality of life.

Celebrating CCR Careers: Steven Z. Pavletic, M.D., Ph.D.

Steven Z. Pavletic, M.D., Ph.D., is a renowned expert in chronic graft-versus-host disease, a serious late complication that can happen after allogeneic bone marrow transplants. After serving at the NCI for over 20 years, he is now announcing his retirement.

Stock image depicting a CAR T cell (blue) attacking a cancer cell (orange). Image: iStock

T-cell receptors can help CAR T cells steer clear of healthy tissue while they attack tumors

Adding a specific T-cell receptor to CAR T cells may reduce side effects of immunotherapies designed to target solid tumors.

CD45R-stained IHC image depicting B cells within a tertiary lymphoid structure in a triple-treated cholangiocarcinoma tumor

Study uncovers mechanism behind effectiveness of three-drug combination in patients with a rare bile duct cancer

Combining anti-VEGF therapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors stimulated the production of B cells to fight cholangiocarcinoma, a rare bile duct cancer.

Celebrating CCR Careers: Ira Pastan, M.D.

Ira Pastan, M.D., who pioneered receptor biology in animal cells and mentored several generations of scientists, announces his retirement from the NCI.

Microscopy image of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Condition of patients’ immune cells can affect how they respond to immunotherapy

Researchers found that T cells in patients whose cancers did not respond to CD22 CAR T-cell therapy showed markers of cellular exhaustion and were in a later stage of development.

S. Cenk Sahinalp elected to 2025 class of ISCB Fellows

S. Cenk Sahinalp, Ph.D., Senior Investigator in the Cancer Data Science Laboratory, was elected to the 2025 class of International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Fellows. The program recognizes individuals who have played a pivotal role in advancing bioinformatics and computational biology. Sahinalp is being honored for his work as a leader in algorithmic methods for cancer genomics, structural variation and tumor evolution.

Combination immunotherapy shrank a variety of metastatic solid cancers

Results of a clinical trial led by Steven A. Rosenberg, M.D., Chief and Senior Investigator in the Surgery Branch, showed that a new form of tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy dramatically improved the treatment’s effectiveness in patients with metastatic gastrointestinal cancers. The findings, published April 1, 2025, in Nature Medicine, offer hope that this personalized immunotherapy regime could be used to treat a variety of solid tumors, which has so far eluded researchers developing cell-based therapies.

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