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Acral melanoma grows on the soles, palms or under a nail, places without sun exposure, and it is the commonest melanoma in people with darker skin. It is often mistaken for a wart, bruise or fungal nail and so found late; treatment follows skin melanoma, but immunotherapy works less often because the tumour carries fewer mutations.

Acute myeloid leukaemia in children carries gene fusions rather than the mutations of ageing, is treated with four or five intensive courses of chemotherapy, and cures around two thirds of children. Adding gemtuzumab ozogamicin lowered relapse in the AAML0531 trial, and the menin inhibitor revumenib is the first targeted drug approved for the KMT2A-rearranged form common in young children.

Most people with acute myeloid leukaemia are over 65, and many cannot take intensive chemotherapy. Venetoclax with azacitidine, two gentler drugs, doubled remission rates and lengthened life in this group, replacing the old choice between supportive care and low-dose chemotherapy.

Acute promyelocytic leukaemia is caused by a single fused gene that freezes blood cells at an immature stage and triggers dangerous bleeding. Two non-chemotherapy drugs, a vitamin A derivative and arsenic trioxide, make the cells mature and cure more than nine in ten patients.

Adenoid cystic carcinoma is a slow but relentless cancer of the salivary glands that creeps along nerves and comes back years later, often in the lungs. Surgery with radiotherapy is the only cure, chemotherapy barely works, and the tablets lenvatinib and axitinib can hold spreading disease still for months rather than shrink it.

People aged 15 to 39 get a different mix of cancers from children or older adults: leukaemia, lymphoma, testicular and thyroid cancer, melanoma, sarcoma and brain tumours in the younger years, then breast, cervical and bowel cancer towards 40. For decades their survival improved more slowly than anyone else's: they fell between children's and adults' hospitals and joined few trials.

Granulosa cell tumours, a rare form of ovarian cancer, make oestrogen, so they often announce themselves with abnormal bleeding, and almost all carry the same single FOXL2 mutation. Surgery cures most; relapses come late and are treated with further surgery, hormone-blocking drugs, bevacizumab or chemotherapy.

Advanced adrenocortical carcinoma is adrenal cortex cancer that has spread to distant organs or cannot be removed, one of the hardest endocrine cancers to treat. The standard is mitotane with etoposide, doxorubicin and cisplatin, established by the FIRM-ACT trial; limited spread is treated locally, hormone excess with steroid-blocking drugs, and immunotherapy helps a minority.

Advanced small bowel adenocarcinoma is cancer of the small intestine that has spread to the liver, peritoneum or elsewhere, treated with the chemotherapy used for bowel cancer, oxaliplatin with a fluoropyrimidine, then taxanes or irinotecan. The exception is the sizeable minority with mismatch-repair-deficient tumours, for whom the immunotherapy pembrolizumab works far better than chemotherapy.

Advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma is a skin cancer that has grown beyond what surgery or radiotherapy can remove or has spread to lymph nodes or organs. Because sun damage gives it more mutations than almost any other cancer, immunotherapy works well: cemiplimab or pembrolizumab shrinks about half of tumours, often for years, and cemiplimab before surgery can make large tumours vanish.

Advanced hepatocellular carcinoma has invaded the liver's veins or spread beyond it. Sorafenib was the only drug for a decade; now the combination of the immunotherapy atezolizumab with the anti-angiogenic antibody bevacizumab, or the two-antibody regimen durvalumab with tremelimumab, is standard first line, and several further drugs follow it.

Advanced melanoma has spread beyond what surgery can remove, and it is the cancer in which immunotherapy first proved it could cure some people: about half of those given nivolumab with ipilimumab are alive ten years later. If immunotherapy fails, options include a cell therapy grown from the patient's own immune cells, a virus injected into the tumour, and targeted pills for BRAF-mutant disease.

Advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer has spread beyond the uterus or come back after treatment. Chemotherapy plus an immune checkpoint antibody is now the first treatment for everyone, with the biggest gains in mismatch-repair-deficient tumours, and lenvatinib with pembrolizumab is the standard when platinum chemotherapy stops working.

Advanced systemic mastocytosis is the dangerous form of this rare blood cancer, in which KIT-mutant mast cells damage the marrow, liver, gut or bones, grow alongside a second blood cancer such as chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia, or flood the blood as mast cell leukaemia. The KIT-blocking tablets midostaurin and avapritinib have replaced older chemotherapy, and fit patients may have a transplant.

Advanced-stage classical Hodgkin lymphoma is Hodgkin lymphoma involving nodes on both sides of the diaphragm or organs such as the liver, lungs or bone marrow. It is treated with six cycles of combination chemotherapy, and two trials changed the standard: replacing bleomycin with brentuximab vedotin (ECHELON-1) and then with nivolumab (SWOG S1826), which cured more patients with less toxicity.

ALK-positive lung cancer is driven by a fused ALK gene and is treated with a pill from the start. The newest inhibitors keep the disease under control for years, with lorlatinib holding six in ten patients progression-free at five years, and two years of alectinib after surgery cuts recurrence by three quarters.

Alveolar soft part sarcoma is a rare, slow-growing cancer of young adults driven by a single fusion gene, ASPSCR1-TFE3, that switches on blood vessel growth. Chemotherapy does not work, but drugs that block the tumour's blood supply shrink it, and in 2023 the immunotherapy atezolizumab became the first drug approved for it.

A single-arm trial of albumin-bound sirolimus in the ultra-rare tumour PEComa produced lasting responses in about four in ten patients and won the first approval for the disease.

Anal high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions are the HPV-driven precancer that anal cancer grows from, found by screening people at high risk with cytology and high-resolution anoscopy. The ANCHOR trial showed that treating these lesions, mostly by ablation in the clinic, cuts the number that become anal cancer, so screening and treatment are now recommended for people living with HIV.

Anaplastic thyroid cancer is the rare, fast-growing form that presents as a rapidly enlarging neck mass threatening the airway. It was almost uniformly fatal within months; combining BRAF-targeted drugs, immunotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy has lifted survival for the first time.

Angiosarcoma is an aggressive vascular tumour, a cancer of the cells that line blood and lymph vessels. It grows as bruise-like patches on the scalp of older people, in breasts treated years earlier with radiotherapy, or inside organs. Surgery and radiotherapy are used where possible, weekly paclitaxel is the most active drug, and immunotherapy helps a minority with the sun-damaged scalp form.

A small French trial showed weekly paclitaxel controls angiosarcoma in most patients for a few months, making it the standard drug for this rare vascular cancer.

Appendiceal adenocarcinoma is the invasive, gland-forming form of appendix cancer that behaves more like bowel cancer than the jelly-producing low-grade tumours, spreading to lymph nodes and the abdominal lining. It is treated with right hemicolectomy and bowel-cancer chemotherapy, and peritoneal spread with cytoreductive surgery and heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy in fit patients.

IDH-mutant astrocytoma is the slow-growing form of adult glioma, defined by a mutation in the IDH1 or IDH2 gene that makes the tumour produce a chemical which rewires its own cells. Surgery first, and then either watchful waiting, the new pill vorasidenib, or radiotherapy with chemotherapy, depending on grade and how much tumour is left.

Biochemical recurrence of prostate cancer is a rising PSA after surgery or radiotherapy with nothing yet visible on scans. Salvage radiotherapy can still cure it after surgery, and for a fast-doubling PSA the EMBARK trial showed that enzalutamide with or without hormone therapy delays spread.

Borderline resectable pancreatic cancer touches the big blood vessels behind the pancreas, so an operation straight away would probably leave cancer behind. Chemotherapy first, usually FOLFIRINOX for several months and sometimes radiotherapy, shrinks the edge of the tumour, and patients whose disease has not spread go on to surgery with a better chance of a clean removal.

BRAF V600-mutant melanoma has a single faulty switch that drives it to grow, and two pills, a BRAF inhibitor with a MEK inhibitor, can shut that switch off and shrink the cancer within weeks. Immunotherapy is usually given first because its effect lasts longer, and the pills are kept for later or given for a year after surgery to prevent relapse.

BRAF V600E bowel cancer carries the same mutation as many melanomas, but BRAF drugs alone did nothing here because the tumour re-routes its growth signal through EGFR. Blocking both with encorafenib and cetuximab, now given with chemotherapy from the start, has doubled survival in a subtype that used to be the worst.

BRAF V600E lung cancer carries the same mutation as many melanomas and is treated with the same pairs of pills that block BRAF and MEK together. Dabrafenib with trametinib and encorafenib with binimetinib each shrink about two thirds to three quarters of untreated tumours.

Brain metastases are cancers that have spread to the brain from elsewhere, most often from the lung, breast or skin. Focused radiation aimed at each spot (radiosurgery) has largely replaced radiation to the whole brain, and for some cancers modern targeted drugs and immunotherapy reach the brain well enough to shrink the deposits on their own.

BRCA or PALB2-mutant pancreatic cancer is pancreatic cancer in someone who inherited a faulty copy of a gene that repairs broken DNA. These tumours respond better to platinum chemotherapy, and the POLO trial showed that the PARP inhibitor olaparib, taken after platinum has held the disease, delays its return; that made it the first targeted drug approved for a pancreatic cancer subgroup.

Cancer of the cheek lining and gums is India's commonest cancer in men, caused by chewing tobacco and areca nut. Surgery with reconstruction is the mainstay, and trials from Tata Memorial in Mumbai have shown that removing the neck nodes up front, cheap oral chemotherapy, tiny doses of immunotherapy and visual screening by health workers all save lives at low cost.

Favourable subsets of cancer of unknown primary are the roughly one in five cases where the pattern of spread, the microscope appearance or blood markers point strongly to a particular cancer even though no primary can be found. They are treated as that cancer would be, for example breast cancer for a woman with cancer only in armpit nodes, and many are curable or controllable for years.

Unfavourable cancer of unknown primary is the large majority of cases, where a metastatic adenocarcinoma or poorly differentiated carcinoma fits no recognised pattern and its origin cannot be found. Treatment has long been general-purpose platinum chemotherapy, but CUPISCO showed that matching drugs to the tumour's genetic faults after short chemotherapy holds the disease longer.

Germ cell tumours of the brain grow near the pineal gland or above the pituitary in teenagers. The commonest kind, germinoma, is so sensitive to radiation and chemotherapy that most patients are cured; the other kinds need stronger chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and doctors measure two proteins in the blood and spinal fluid to tell them apart and to follow treatment.

Chondrosarcoma is a cancer of cartilage-forming cells in bone. It is nearly immune to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, so complete surgery is the treatment, with proton or carbon-ion beams for skull base and spine tumours that cannot be fully removed. Half of conventional tumours carry an IDH mutation, and the IDH1 blocker ivosidenib is in a phase 3 trial.

Chromophobe kidney cancer comes from a different cell of the kidney's tubules, usually behaves gently and is cured by surgery. Its rare metastatic form responds poorly to immunotherapy, so kinase and mTOR inhibitors are used, and it runs in families with Birt-Hogg-Dube syndrome.

Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia is treated only when it causes problems, and chemotherapy has gone. The first treatment is now either a BTK inhibitor taken indefinitely or a one-year course of venetoclax with obinutuzumab (CLL14), and the two can be combined for a fixed course.

Chronic myeloid leukaemia can accelerate and then transform into an acute leukaemia called blast crisis. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors are given at full strength, combined with acute leukaemia chemotherapy in blast phase, to bring the disease back to chronic phase quickly enough for a donor stem cell transplant, the only treatment that cures it.

Chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukaemia is the disease that imatinib turned from fatal into manageable: a daily pill blocks the BCR::ABL1 protein that drives it. Blood tests track the leukaemia gene to a millionth, newer pills such as asciminib (ASC4FIRST) reach deeper responses faster, and patients with years of undetectable disease can try stopping.

Claudin 18.2 is a tight-junction protein normally hidden inside stomach lining cells that becomes exposed on the surface of many stomach cancers. Zolbetuximab, an antibody against it, added to chemotherapy lengthens survival in tumours that express it strongly, and antibody-drug conjugates and CAR-T cells against the same target are in trials.

Clear cell ovarian cancer grows out of endometriosis, is usually caught early and cured by surgery, but when advanced it resists platinum chemotherapy. Its distinct genetics, with ARID1A and PIK3CA mutations, are the focus of targeted and immune approaches.

Clear cell is the common kidney cancer, driven by loss of the VHL gene that leaves the tumour behaving as if starved of oxygen and flooding itself with blood vessels. That biology explains why anti-angiogenic drugs, immunotherapy and the HIF-2 alpha blocker belzutifan all work.

Mycosis fungoides is a lymphoma that lives in the skin, looking like eczema or psoriasis for years before it is diagnosed. It is treated with creams, light and skin-directed radiotherapy for as long as possible, then with antibodies such as mogamulizumab and brentuximab vedotin when it spreads to the blood or lymph nodes.

Dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans is a rare, slow-growing cancer of the deeper skin that usually appears as a firm plaque or lump on the trunk and is often mistaken for a scar or cyst for years. Surgery with wide margins cures most people; for the few whose tumour cannot be removed or has spread, the pill imatinib works because almost every one is driven by a single gene fusion it blocks.

Early cervical cancer is confined to the cervix and is usually cured by surgery. Recent trials have shown that open surgery is safer than keyhole surgery for radical hysterectomy, that a simple hysterectomy is enough for the smallest tumours, and that young women with small tumours can keep their uterus with a trachelectomy.

Early gastric cancer has not grown beyond the submucosa, whatever the lymph nodes show. In Japan and Korea, where screening endoscopy finds most stomach cancers at this stage, many are removed through the endoscope without an operation, and the rest are cured by gastrectomy.

Early hepatocellular carcinoma means a single tumour, or up to three small ones, in a liver that still works, without spread or vein invasion. It is treated to cure: cutting out the tumour, destroying it with heat through a needle, or replacing the liver by transplant, chosen by tumour size, liver function and portal pressure.

HER2-positive breast cancer caught early is usually cured. Chemotherapy with the antibodies trastuzumab and pertuzumab comes before surgery; if the tumour has gone by then, antibodies alone finish the year, and if cancer remains, trastuzumab emtansine or trastuzumab deruxtecan take over. Small tumours get a gentler regimen, and trials now ask how much treatment can be left out.

Early triple-negative breast cancer is treated to cure. For tumours over 2 cm or with node involvement, chemotherapy plus the immunotherapy pembrolizumab before and after surgery has raised cure rates; BRCA carriers with cancer left at surgery add a year of olaparib, and others with residual cancer are offered capecitabine. Whether the tumour has vanished by surgery guides what comes next.

Bowel cancer is rising in people under 50, for reasons that are still not understood, and it is usually found late because neither patients nor doctors expect it. Treatment is the same as in older adults and works as well stage for stage; the changes are earlier screening, genetic testing for everyone diagnosed young, and attention to fertility, work and family.

Early-stage classical Hodgkin lymphoma is Hodgkin lymphoma confined to one or two lymph node regions on one side of the diaphragm, one of the most curable cancers, with most patients cured by a short course of ABVD chemotherapy with or without radiotherapy to the involved nodes. Because patients are young, trials now use PET scans after two cycles to give as little treatment as safely possible.

EGFR-mutated lung cancer is driven by a single faulty growth receptor and is treated first with a pill rather than chemotherapy. Osimertinib keeps the disease under control for about a year and a half on average, adding chemotherapy or the antibody amivantamab extends that further, and three years of osimertinib after surgery roughly halves the risk of death in early-stage disease.

Endometrial cancer with no specific molecular profile is the default class: no POLE mutation, intact mismatch repair and normal p53. Most are low-grade, oestrogen-driven tumours cured by hysterectomy, and hormone-blocking drugs are their most natural treatment when they do recur.

The CSF1R blocker pexidartinib shrank tenosynovial giant cell tumours in about four in ten patients against none on placebo, becoming the first approved drug for this joint tumour, with a liver-safety programme attached.

Adding ifosfamide to doxorubicin shrank more sarcomas and delayed progression but did not significantly lengthen life, so doxorubicin alone stayed the standard unless a tumour needs to shrink.

Epithelioid haemangioendothelioma is a rare vascular cancer driven by a fusion gene, usually WWTR1-CAMTA1, that behaves unpredictably: some tumours sit unchanged for years while others spread quickly. Stable disease is watched, localised tumours are removed, liver-only disease can be transplanted, and mTOR blockers such as sirolimus are the most used drugs when treatment is needed.

Erdheim-Chester disease is a rare histiocytosis, a cancer-like overgrowth of immune cells called histiocytes that scar the long bones, the tissue around the kidneys and heart, the brain and the skin. Most cases carry the BRAF V600E mutation or another fault in the same growth pathway, and the melanoma drugs vemurafenib and cobimetinib now control the disease in most patients.

Esthesioneuroblastoma is a rare cancer of the nasal cavity and sinuses that arises from the smell-sensing olfactory nerve lining at the roof of the nose, next to the brain. It is treated with surgery through the nose or skull base followed by radiotherapy, with chemotherapy added for high-grade or widespread tumours, and because it can return a decade or more later patients are followed for life.

Small-cell lung cancer that has spread responds fast to chemotherapy but almost always returns within a year. Adding an immunotherapy antibody to first-line chemotherapy helps a minority live for years, and the T-cell engager tarlatamab, which points immune cells at the DLL3 protein on the cancer, has for the first time lengthened life after relapse.