In general, the prognosis for liver cancer is poor because patients are often diagnosed with liver cancer in advanced stage, while its cancer cells can still survive in hypoxia.^1,2 In a recent study conducted by Wong CL and colleagues from the Department of Pathology, School of Clinical Medicine, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong, published in Nature Communications, it was found that hypoxia-induced macropinocytosis is a new metabolic mechanism in liver cancer cells, by which causing the engulfment of extracellular fluid and the subsequent protein digestion to support the unlimited growth of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).¹ The breakthrough discovery indicates that inhibiting hypoxia-induced macropinocytosis could be a novel and effective therapeutic approach for HCC.¹ This study could also be applied to other solid cancer types with hypoxia.¹

It is projected that there will be 1.9 million new cancer diagnoses and over 600,000 cancer deaths in 2022 in the United States alone.¹ Spine is the most common site for bone metastasis; up to 70% of cancer patients could experience spinal metastasis (SM) and about 20% of them become symptomatic, causing considerable pain and morbidity.² Most common regions for SM are dorsal (45%), lumbar (17%), cervical (14%), and dorsolumbar (10%).³ Vertebral fractures (VFs) are the common complications of SM, with an estimation of 30% of patients developing VFs that mostly require surgery.⁴ Tumor lesions and some treatments for cancer can lead to loss of bone tissue, thus increasing the risk of VFs.⁵ Hence, it is imperative to predict the VF risk in SM patients, so that well-informed interventions can be designed.⁵ Factors influencing VFs include both the macro- and micro-structure of the vertebra, especially of the trabecula.⁵ In-vitro methods are used to study the biomechanical forces that alter the vertebral shape, but they cannot accurately measure in-vivo stresses that damage its microstructure.⁵ The development of computational modeling has made it a compelling tool for measuring these in-vivo stressors.⁵ A recent study by Ahmadian et al was to assess the feasibility of the artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted framework to create ‘digital twins’ of the human vertebra, termed ReconGAN, to predict the VF risk in both osteolytic and osteoblastic metastatic tumors.⁵

Hyponatremia, defined as serum sodium below 135mEq/L, is the most prevalent electrolyte disorder observed in the oncology setting.^1,2 It is associated with many different cancer types, from head and neck cancer to breast cancer.² Hyponatremia is particularly prevalent in small cell lung cancer (SCLC), affecting 25% to 44% of SCLC patients.² Hyponatremia in cancer patients is often caused by the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH), a manifestation of paraneoplastic syndromes (PNS) which are commonly related with small cell carcinomas.^3,4 In an interview with Omnihealth Practice, Dr. Angus Leung shared his view on how to optimize the treatment of hyponatremia caused by cancer-induced SIADH with the aim of achieving a better clinical outcome for cancer patients.