Why Cancer Research Is Looking Beyond the Tumor

For a long time, most cancer research focused narrowly on the tumor itself: how cancer cells grow, what causes them to change, and how to target them directly. A growing area of research is now looking at a bigger picture.

Dr. Tobias Janowitz, a cancer researcher and physician at Northwell Health’s Institute for Cancer Research and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, says there’s a growing recognition that cancer affects the entire body, not just the organ where it started. Researchers are working to understand the biological communication happening between different organs and systems as the body responds to cancer, not just what’s happening inside the tumor itself.

One area of focus is the immune system. Rather than categorizing cancers only by where they started in the body, researchers are increasingly looking at whether a cancer can be made more responsive to the immune system, potentially opening treatment options across very different cancer types.

Another area involves hormones and the nervous system. Tumors can change normal signaling throughout the body in ways that affect appetite and behavior. Understanding this better could eventually lead to new approaches for symptoms like appetite loss and unintended weight loss that many cancer patients experience.

Janowitz is especially encouraged by something less technical: a growing emphasis on listening to patients themselves as part of the research process. What patients experience as symptoms, he says, isn’t just something to manage — it’s information that can point researchers toward the questions that matter most.

None of this replaces existing cancer research aimed at treatments and cures. But it reflects a shift in how research is approached: not only asking how to kill cancer cells, but also asking what a person’s whole body and experience can reveal about the disease, and about how to help them live well alongside it.