Removing ‘invisibility cloaks’ and safely skipping chemo: new weapons in war on cancer shared at US conference

News of a daily pill that doubles survival time in patients with pancreatic cancer drew a standing ovation at the conference. Photograph: Ekaterina Goncharova/ View image in fullscreen News of a daily pill that doubles survival time in patients with pancreatic cancer drew a standing ovation at the conference. Photograph: Ekaterina Goncharova/ Removing ‘invisibility cloaks’ and safely skipping chemo: new weapons in war on cancer shared at US conference Drug that stops cancer cells hiding and a breakthrough for pancreatic cancer among highlights from Asco conference – but there were also notes of caution Doctors, scientists and researchers shared new research about ways to tackle cancer at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco) annual meeting, the world’s largest cancer conference. The event in Chicago, attended by 40,000 health professionals, featured more than 200 sessions and 2,700 poster presentations on this year’s theme, “the science and practice of translation: improving cancer outcomes worldwide”. Here are the five biggest takeaways. 1. Smart drugs can help patients kill off their own tumours Immunotherapy drugs, which harness the body’s immune system to attack tumours, have revolutionised cancer treatment over the last decade. But they don’t work in every patient. Their effectiveness can falter or fail when cancer cells hide. Now researchers have developed a smart drug that stops cancer cells hiding. The experimental tablet, GRWD5769, can help shrink tumours 30% in six of the world’s most common forms of the disease, delegates in Chicago were told. All of the patients in a trial spanning the UK, France, Spain and Australia had previously failed to respond to treatment. Most had no options left when they joined the study. Crucially, immunotherapy had not worked or had stopped working. The smart drug was able to remove “invisibility cloaks” from tumour cells, exposing them to the parts of the immune system that attack infections and diseases. This enabled an immunotherapy drug, cemiplimab, to detect and then destroy the cancer. Researchers led , England, found tumours shrank in 26 of 83 patients with cervical, bladder, liver, bowel, lung or head and neck cancers who were given GRWD5769 alongside cemiplimab. Of the 26, 15 had tumour reductions of at least 30%. Speaking to the Guardian in Chicago, the trial’s principal investigator, Prof Fiona Thistlethwaite, said: “For a drug that is given as a tablet, this is very impressive. It’s early days, and we need further studies, but this is a new drug with a new mechanism that clearly helps immunotherapy perform more effectively.” A second trial presented at Asco showed that combining another smart drug with chemotherapy helped people with lung cancer live 15% longer on average.