Atlas · 474 cancers

Cancers A to Z

Every cancer and subtype in the Atlas, with a plain-English summary of what it is and how it is treated now.

Search cancers in the Atlas All 19,500+ records

A

Acinic cell carcinoma of the salivary glands: Acinic cell carcinoma is a salivary gland cancer, almost always of the parotid gland, whose cells resemble the gland's normal enzyme-making cells. It is usually low grade and slow, presenting as a painless lump that is easily mistaken for a benign tumour, a...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Acral melanoma: 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, bu...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia: Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is the childhood cancer success story, and was the first disease treated with CAR-T and with a T-cell engager.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Acute myeloid leukaemia: Acute myeloid leukaemia is an aggressive blood cancer where, after 40 years of the same chemotherapy, a wave of targeted drugs (FLT3, IDH, BCL-2, menin) arrived.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Acute myeloid leukaemia in children: 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 AAML05...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Acute myeloid leukaemia in older or unfit patients: 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 an...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Acute promyelocytic leukaemia: 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 n...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adamantinoma of bone: Adamantinoma is a very rare, slow-growing bone cancer of young adults that almost always affects the shin bone, made of epithelial cells inside fibrous bone, and listed with the bone sarcomas in the WHO classification. It is cured by cutting it out with a m...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adenocarcinoma in situ and minimally invasive adenocarcinoma of the lung: Adenocarcinoma in situ and minimally invasive adenocarcinoma are the earliest forms of lung cancer of the adenocarcinoma type: small tumours, usually seen as ground-glass spots on a CT scan, that have not yet invaded, or have invaded less than five millimet...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adenocarcinoma of the lung: Lung adenocarcinoma is the most common type of lung cancer and the form that non-smokers usually get; it starts in the mucus-making gland cells of the small airways, most often at the edge of the lung. It is the type in which testing for a driver mutation m...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adenocarcinoma of the urethra (including clear cell adenocarcinoma): Adenocarcinoma of the urethra is a gland-forming type of urethral cancer, more often seen in women, that can start in the small glands beside the urethra or in a pouch (diverticulum) in its wall. The clear cell form is its own entity in the WHO classificati...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adenoid cystic carcinoma: Adenoid cystic carcinoma is a slow-growing cancer of the salivary glands that spreads along nerves and can come back years after treatment, often in the lungs. Surgery with radiotherapy is the treatment that cures it, chemotherapy has little effect, and the...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adenoid cystic carcinoma of the breast: Adenoid cystic carcinoma of the breast is a very rare breast cancer that is triple-negative on testing but behaves almost the opposite of usual triple-negative disease: it seldom reaches the lymph nodes, and nearly everyone is alive at ten years. It is the...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adenoma-like adenocarcinoma of the colon and rectum: Adenoma-like adenocarcinoma is a form of bowel cancer whose invasive part still looks like a harmless polyp under the microscope, which is why it is often reported as an adenoma on biopsy and only recognised once the bowel is removed. Despite frequently gro...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adenosquamous and squamous carcinoma of the gallbladder: Adenosquamous carcinoma is a gallbladder cancer that mixes gland-forming and squamous (skin-like) cancer cells; pure squamous carcinoma is rarer still. These tumours are larger and more advanced when found and do worse than ordinary adenocarcinoma, but they...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adenosquamous carcinoma of the cervix: Adenosquamous carcinoma of the cervix is an uncommon cervical cancer containing both gland-forming and squamous cancer cells. Like cervical adenocarcinoma it is caught less well by smear screening and does somewhat worse than squamous cancer stage for stage...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adenosquamous carcinoma of the lung: Adenosquamous carcinoma is an uncommon lung cancer that contains both gland-forming and squamous cancer cells, each making up at least a tenth of the tumour. It behaves worse than either pure type, but its gland-forming part often carries an EGFR mutation,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adenosquamous carcinoma of the pancreas: Adenosquamous carcinoma is a rare form of pancreatic cancer in which at least three tenths of the tumour has turned into squamous cells, the flat cells of skin-like linings. It is found more often in the body and tail, tends to be larger and poorly differen...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adolescent and young adult cancers (ages 15 to 39): 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 t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adrenocortical carcinoma: Adrenocortical carcinoma is a rare, aggressive cancer of the adrenal gland that often over-produces hormones. Surgery is the only cure, mitotane is the one drug specific to it (with real toxicity), and chemotherapy or immunotherapy help only a minority.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adult granulosa cell tumour of the ovary: 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Adult T-cell leukaemia/lymphoma: A T-cell lymphoma caused by a virus, HTLV-1, which is usually caught in infancy through breast milk and causes the lymphoma decades later in a small minority of the people it infects. It occurs in people from south-western Japan, the Caribbean, west and cen...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Advanced and metastatic adrenocortical carcinoma (ENSAT stage IV or unresectable): Advanced adrenocortical carcinoma is adrenal cortex cancer that has spread to distant organs or cannot be removed. The standard is mitotane with etoposide, doxorubicin and cisplatin, established by the FIRM-ACT trial in 304 patients; limited spread is treat...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Advanced and metastatic small bowel adenocarcinoma: 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 i...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma: 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 we...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (BCLC C): 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 d...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Advanced melanoma (unresectable stage III and stage IV): 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 i...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer: 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 len...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Advanced systemic mastocytosis (aggressive SM, SM with an associated haematological neoplasm, mast cell leukaemia): 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Advanced-stage classical Hodgkin lymphoma (stage III to IV): 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: r...Open in Atlas onco.cc
ALK-negative anaplastic large cell lymphoma: An aggressive T-cell lymphoma that looks like its ALK-positive sibling under the microscope and carries the same CD30 marker, but lacks the broken ALK gene. It affects older people and is cured less often, and several genetic changes inside it predict very...Open in Atlas onco.cc
ALK-positive anaplastic large cell lymphoma: An aggressive T-cell lymphoma, mostly of children and young adults, whose cells carry a broken ALK gene and a protein called CD30 on the surface. Despite looking alarming down the microscope it is the T-cell lymphoma most often cured, and both of its marker...Open in Atlas onco.cc
ALK-positive non-small-cell lung cancer: 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 al...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Alveolar soft part sarcoma: 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 t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Ampullary cancer (ampulla of Vater): Ampullary cancer, a biliary tract cancer, starts where the bile and pancreatic ducts empty into the small bowel. Because it blocks bile flow early it is often caught while still removable, and the Whipple operation cures a good share of patients. Tumours co...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Anal cancer (squamous cell carcinoma): An HPV-caused cancer of the anal canal that is usually cured without surgery by combined chemotherapy and radiation. Prevention (HPV vaccination, screening of high-risk groups) and immunotherapy for advanced disease are the new fronts.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Anal high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (precursor): 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 abla...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Anaplastic thyroid cancer: Anaplastic thyroid cancer is the rare, fast-growing form that presents as a rapidly enlarging neck mass threatening the airway. Few patients lived more than a few months; combining BRAF-targeted drugs, immunotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy has lifted surv...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Angiosarcoma: 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 radiother...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Apocrine carcinoma of the breast: Apocrine breast cancers are made of large cells resembling sweat-gland cells. They lack oestrogen and progesterone receptors but carry the androgen receptor, so the triple-negative ones sit in the luminal androgen receptor group and are the tumours in which...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Appendiceal adenocarcinoma (mucinous and non-mucinous, including signet ring cell): 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 b...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Appendiceal cancer and pseudomyxoma peritonei: Rare tumours of the appendix that range from slow mucin-producing growths that fill the abdomen (pseudomyxoma peritonei) to aggressive adenocarcinomas. The slow forms are treated by extensive surgery with heated chemotherapy in the abdomen; the fast ones li...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Astrocytoma, IDH-mutant (grades 2 to 4): 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,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumour (ATRT): ATRT is an aggressive brain tumour of babies and toddlers caused by loss of a single gene, SMARCB1, part of the machinery that opens and closes DNA. Intensive chemotherapy with stem-cell rescue, and radiotherapy where age allows, now cure a meaningful share...Open in Atlas onco.cc

B

Bartholin gland carcinoma: Bartholin gland carcinoma is a very rare vulvar cancer arising in the lubricating glands at the entrance to the vagina, often mistaken at first for a cyst or abscess in a postmenopausal woman. It can be a squamous cancer, an adenocarcinoma or an adenoid cys...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Basal cell carcinoma: Basal cell carcinoma is a skin cancer and the most common cancer of all, caused by sun exposure and almost never life-threatening. Nearly all are removed surgically; the rare advanced cases are treated with drugs that block the hedgehog signalling pathway,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Basal-like 1 triple-negative breast cancer (BL1): Basal-like 1 is the subtype of triple-negative breast cancer whose cancer cells are busiest dividing and worst at repairing DNA. In the studies that defined it, these tumours were the most likely to disappear completely with chemotherapy before surgery, abo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Basal-like 2 triple-negative breast cancer (BL2): Basal-like 2 is a subtype of triple-negative breast cancer that shares the basal identity of basal-like 1 but is driven more by growth-factor signalling than by DNA damage, and it responded worst to standard chemotherapy before surgery in the studies that d...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Basaloid squamous cell carcinoma of the lung: Basaloid squamous cell carcinoma is a variant of squamous lung cancer made of small, dark, tightly packed cells that grow in nests; survival in the source series was lower than in other squamous cell carcinoma. No trial exists in the variant alone, so the p...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Biliary tract cancer (all types): Biliary tract cancers arise in the bile ducts inside or outside the liver, the gallbladder or the ampulla where the duct meets the bowel. They share short survival and the same first-line chemotherapy with immunotherapy, but differ in causes and in the targ...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Biliary tract cancer (cholangiocarcinoma): Cholangiocarcinoma is cancer of the bile ducts or gallbladder. It is rare and often found late, but it turned out to carry more targetable mutations than almost any other gastrointestinal cancer, and immunotherapy now adds to chemotherapy from the first tre...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Biochemical recurrence of prostate cancer: 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 wi...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Bladder & urothelial cancer: Bladder cancer went from 40 years of cisplatin to an ADC-immunotherapy combination that nearly doubled survival, and in 2026 the first blood-test-guided drug approval.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN): Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm is a rare aggressive leukaemia-like blood cancer of dendritic-cell precursors, a few hundred US cases a year, that often first appears as bruise-like skin lesions. Two CD123-directed drugs, tagraxofusp and piveki...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Borderline resectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: 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 ed...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Bowen's disease (squamous cell carcinoma in situ): Bowen's disease is the earliest form of squamous cell skin cancer: abnormal cells fill the outer layer of the skin but have not broken through it, so it cannot spread. It looks like a red, scaly patch, often on the lower leg, and it is usually cured by a cr...Open in Atlas onco.cc
BRAF V600-mutant melanoma: 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 lon...Open in Atlas onco.cc
BRAF V600E-mutant colorectal cancer: 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,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
BRAF V600E-mutant non-small-cell lung cancer: 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 un...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Brain and spinal cord tumours (all types): Brain and spinal cord tumours range from slow-growing meningiomas and low-grade gliomas to glioblastoma, the commonest malignant brain tumour in adults, and a distinct set of childhood tumours such as medulloblastoma and diffuse midline glioma. Molecular ma...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Brain metastases (secondary brain 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
BRCA or PALB2-mutant pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: 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 af...Open in Atlas onco.cc
BRCA-associated triple-negative breast cancer: Some triple-negative breast cancers arise because a person was born with a faulty BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene. This group is diagnosed younger, is found by a blood test NICE recommends for all women under 50 with triple-negative disease, and has options of its own:...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Breast cancer (all types): Breast cancer is not one disease, and the result that decides which page you need is the receptor result: whether the cancer carries oestrogen and progesterone receptors, and whether it carries too much HER2. Those two answers give four boxes, not three, wi...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma: A rare lymphoma that grows in the scar capsule the body forms around a breast implant, usually many years after the operation, and usually shows itself as sudden swelling of the breast from fluid around the implant. It is linked to textured implants, and wh...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Buccal mucosa and gingivobuccal cancer (oral cancer in India): 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 ora...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Burkitt leukaemia: Burkitt leukaemia is Burkitt lymphoma presenting mainly in the bone marrow and blood, so that it looks like acute lymphoblastic leukaemia but is a mature B-cell cancer driven by the MYC gene. It is treated as Burkitt lymphoma, with short, very intensive che...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Burkitt lymphoma: Burkitt lymphoma is the fastest-growing human tumour, driven by a single rearrangement that switches on the MYC gene. That speed makes it exquisitely sensitive to chemotherapy: short, intense courses, now with the antibody rituximab, cure the great majority...Open in Atlas onco.cc

C

Cancer of unknown primary (CUP): Cancer found already spread, where doctors cannot find where it started. Genomic profiling finds a drug target in about a third of cases and tumour-agnostic approvals apply directly; the rest still rely on general-purpose chemotherapy, which is what those t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Cancer of unknown primary, favourable subsets: 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 can...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Cancer of unknown primary, unfavourable (adenocarcinoma and poorly differentiated carcinoma): 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 chemother...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma: Carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma is a salivary gland cancer that grows out of a long-standing benign pleomorphic adenoma, the commonest salivary tumour, usually in the parotid. Its outlook depends on how far the cancer has grown beyond the old adenoma's cap...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Carcinoma in situ and dysplasia of the gallbladder: Dysplasia means the cells lining the gallbladder have become abnormal but have not invaded; carcinoma in situ (stage 0) is the most abnormal form, with cancer cells still confined to the lining. Both are found by the pathologist after a gallbladder is remov...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Carcinoma with medullary pattern (medullary breast cancer): Medullary breast cancers are high-grade, triple-negative tumours with a sharp border and a heavy immune-cell infiltrate that, despite looking aggressive, do better than ordinary breast cancers of the same grade. They are linked to BRCA1. Pathologists now ca...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Central nervous system germ cell tumours (germinoma and non-germinomatous): 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 radiothe...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Cervical cancer: A cancer that could be eliminated by HPV vaccination and screening. For those who develop it, immunotherapy and a tissue-factor ADC have improved survival.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Childhood cancers (all types): Cancer in children is rare and different from adult cancer: the common types are leukaemias, brain tumours, lymphomas and embryonal tumours such as neuroblastoma and Wilms tumour, most are curable in well-resourced health systems, and the great challenge is...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Childhood lung and airway tumours (pleuropulmonary blastoma, tracheobronchial tumours): Primary lung tumours in children are rare and unlike adult lung cancer. Pleuropulmonary blastoma starts as a lung cyst in infants and results from a faulty DICER1 gene that also predisposes to thyroid, ovarian and kidney tumours; removing cysts early, guide...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Chondrosarcoma: 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Chordoma: Chordoma is a slow-growing bone cancer (a sarcoma) of the skull base and spine that arises from leftover embryonic notochord cells. Complete surgery followed by high-dose proton or carbon-ion radiotherapy controls most tumours, and the whole disease depends...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Choriocarcinoma of the testis: Choriocarcinoma is the rarest and most dangerous form of non-seminoma testicular cancer, made of placenta-like cells that pour out the pregnancy hormone hCG and spread early through the blood to the lungs, liver and brain, where they can bleed. Fewer than e...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Choroid plexus carcinoma: Choroid plexus carcinoma is a rare, aggressive brain tumour of infants and young children that grows from the tissue that makes spinal fluid inside the brain's ventricles, causing fluid build-up and pressure. It is strongly linked to an inherited TP53 fault...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Chromophobe renal cell carcinoma: 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 Bi...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia: A slow leukaemia that no longer needs chemotherapy: BTK inhibitors and venetoclax control it for years, often in fixed-duration courses.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, first treatment: 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML): Chronic myeloid leukaemia is a blood cancer driven by a single fused gene, BCR-ABL1, and the model for oncogene-targeted treatment: imatinib in 2001 and the tyrosine kinase inhibitors that followed turned it into a condition most people live with long-term....Open in Atlas onco.cc
Chronic myeloid leukaemia, accelerated and blast phase: 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 p...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Chronic myeloid leukaemia, chronic phase: 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)...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia and MDS/MPN overlap neoplasms: Chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia and its relatives are bone-marrow cancers that behave partly like myelodysplasia (poorly made blood cells) and partly like a proliferative disease (an excess of monocytes or platelets). Hypomethylating agents produce respons...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Claudin 18.2-positive gastric cancer: 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 stron...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Clear cell ovarian cancer: 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.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Clear cell papillary renal cell tumour: Clear cell papillary renal cell tumour is a small, low-grade kidney tumour that looks like a mix of clear cell and papillary kidney cancer but behaves harmlessly: no case has been reported to spread. The WHO renamed it from carcinoma to tumour in 2022 for t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Clear cell renal cell carcinoma: 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Collecting duct carcinoma of the kidney: Collecting duct carcinoma is a rare, aggressive kidney cancer that starts in the tubes deep in the kidney that collect urine. It is treated with surgery where possible and the platinum chemotherapy used for bladder cancer, not the usual kidney cancer drugs,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Colloid (mucinous non-cystic) carcinoma of the pancreas: Colloid carcinoma is a rare form of pancreatic cancer in which the cancer cells float in large pools of mucus rather than forming glands in dense scar. It usually grows out of an intestinal-type IPMN in the main pancreatic duct, presents as a larger but low...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Colon cancer (adenocarcinoma of the colon): Colon cancer is bowel cancer arising in the large bowel above the rectum. It shares its biology with colorectal cancer but is treated differently from rectal cancer: surgery comes first without radiotherapy, chemotherapy afterwards is decided by stage and i...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Colorectal cancer: The cancer where screening works best and where immunotherapy can make some tumours disappear entirely; chemotherapy still carries most metastatic disease, now with antibodies and targeted combinations chosen by RAS, BRAF, mismatch repair and which side of...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Conjunctival melanoma: Conjunctival melanoma is a rare melanoma of the clear membrane over the white of the eye, usually growing out of a flat brown patch called primary acquired melanosis. It is removed with a margin and the edges frozen or treated with chemotherapy drops; about...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Corticotroph pituitary neuroendocrine tumour (Cushing disease and silent corticotroph tumour): A corticotroph tumour is a pituitary tumour of the cells that make ACTH. When it secretes it floods the body with cortisol, causing Cushing disease (weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, thin skin); the silent form is found as a large non-functioning...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Craniopharyngioma: Craniopharyngioma is a benign but destructive brain tumour growing from embryonic remnants beside the pituitary gland and hypothalamus. Surgery, or limited surgery plus radiotherapy, cures most people, but the price can be lifelong hormone deficiency and se...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma: Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma is a sun-related skin cancer with over a million US cases a year, almost all cured by removing them. The 2 to 5% that grow deep or spread respond to PD-1 immunotherapy (cemiplimab, pembrolizumab), which is now also given af...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (mycosis fungoides and Sezary syndrome): Cutaneous T-cell lymphoma is a family of nine lymphomas that start in the skin and mostly stay there, of which mycosis fungoides is by far the commonest. Most of them are long-term skin conditions managed over decades rather than cancers that are cured or n...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Cystic duct carcinoma: Cystic duct carcinoma is a bile duct cancer arising in the short tube that joins the gallbladder to the main bile duct. It is staged as a gallbladder cancer under the AJCC system, and behaves better when it stays inside the duct than when it grows beyond it...Open in Atlas onco.cc

D

Dedifferentiated chordoma: Dedifferentiated chordoma is a rare form of chordoma in which part of the tumour has turned into a high-grade sarcoma, usually after recurrence or radiotherapy but sometimes from the start. The sarcoma part decides the outcome and made up 3 to 95 percent of...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans: 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 t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Desmoid tumour: Desmoid tumours are locally aggressive growths of fibroblast-like cells, classed with soft-tissue sarcomas, driven by WNT mutations, that never spread to distant organs but can invade nerves, bowel and muscle. Many stop growing or shrink on their own, so wa...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Desmoplastic small round cell tumour: Desmoplastic small round cell tumour is a very rare sarcoma of adolescents and young men that grows across the lining of the abdomen as many nodules, driven by an EWSR1-WT1 fusion. Treatment is intensive chemotherapy, surgery to remove every nodule, sometim...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma: Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is an aggressive but curable lymphoma. CAR-T cures about 40% of relapsed patients, and off-the-shelf bispecifics are now approved.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Diffuse midline glioma, H3 K27-altered (including DIPG): Diffuse midline glioma grows through the brainstem and cannot be removed surgically. A single change in a histone protein (H3 K27M) rewires how the tumour reads its DNA. Radiotherapy was long the only help; in 2025 the first drug aimed at this tumour, dorda...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Ductal adenocarcinoma of the prostate: Ductal adenocarcinoma is a rare type of prostate cancer, roughly one case in six hundred, that grows from the larger ducts of the gland rather than from its small acini. It tends to make less PSA than ordinary prostate cancer, so it is found later and more...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS): DCIS is abnormal cells confined to the milk ducts of the breast; it is not yet invasive cancer and cannot spread, but some would become invasive if left. Lumpectomy with radiotherapy, or mastectomy, halves local recurrence, so the live question is which low...Open in Atlas onco.cc

E

Early cervical cancer and fertility-sparing surgery: 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Early gastric cancer: 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 cur...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Early hepatocellular carcinoma (BCLC 0 and A): 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Early HER2-positive breast cancer: 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 tr...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Early triple-negative breast cancer: 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Early-onset colorectal cancer (under 50): 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 ea...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Early-stage classical Hodgkin lymphoma (stage I to II): 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
EBV-positive diffuse large B-cell lymphoma: A diffuse large B-cell lymphoma in which Epstein-Barr virus, the virus of glandular fever, is present in the tumour cells. It is diagnosed by a stain on the biopsy, it is commoner in east Asia and Latin America than in Europe, and it is treated in the same...Open in Atlas onco.cc
EGFR-mutated non-small-cell lung cancer: 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 amivanta...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Embryonal carcinoma of the testis: Embryonal carcinoma is the most aggressive and most common building block of non-seminoma testicular cancer, made of primitive cells that resemble an early embryo and can turn into the other tumour types. On its own or as the main component it spreads early...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Endometrial cancer: The gynaecological cancer where immunotherapy has had the biggest impact, guided by molecular classification.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Endometrial cancer with no specific molecular profile: 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 treatm...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Enteropathy-associated T-cell lymphoma: An aggressive T-cell lymphoma of the small bowel that arises out of coeliac disease, usually in somebody whose coeliac disease was diagnosed late or has not responded to a gluten-free diet. It often announces itself as a perforation or obstruction of the bo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Eosinophilic solid and cystic renal cell carcinoma: Eosinophilic solid and cystic renal cell carcinoma is a recently named kidney cancer, almost always in women, made of pink cells in solid areas and cysts. It was first seen in people with tuberous sclerosis and then found on its own, it is nearly always con...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Ependymoma: Ependymomas grow from the cells lining the fluid spaces of the brain and spinal cord, mostly in children under five. Removing the whole tumour followed by focused radiotherapy controls most cases; molecular groups defined in 2021 behave differently, with po...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Epithelioid haemangioendothelioma: 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Epithelioid sarcoma: Epithelioid sarcoma is a rare soft tissue cancer that has lost a gene brake called SMARCB1, leaving it dependent on the enzyme EZH2. Surgery cures localised tumours. The EZH2 inhibitor tazemetostat was approved in 2020 and withdrawn worldwide in March 2026...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Erdheim-Chester disease: 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Erdheim-Chester disease, Rosai-Dorfman disease and other histiocytic neoplasms: Histiocytoses are diseases in which immune scavenger cells build up in bone, heart, brain, kidneys and skin. They used to be treated as inflammatory conditions with steroids and interferon. The discovery that most carry mutations in the same growth pathway...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Essential thrombocythaemia (ET): Essential thrombocythaemia is a slow blood cancer in which the marrow makes too many platelets. Most people need only aspirin and monitoring; those at higher risk of clots take a drug to lower the platelet count, usually hydroxyurea or interferon, with anag...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Esthesioneuroblastoma (olfactory neuroblastoma): 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,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Ewing sarcoma: Ewing sarcoma is a bone and soft-tissue cancer of teenagers driven by a single fusion gene, EWSR1-FLI1. Intensive chemotherapy with surgery or radiation cures most localised cases; disease that has spread at diagnosis, and relapse, remain hard to treat, and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer: 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...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Extragonadal germ cell tumour: Extragonadal germ cell tumours are the same cancers as testicular germ cell tumours but arising in the midline of the body, most often the chest or the back of the abdomen. Seminomas are highly curable with chemotherapy; non-seminomas of the chest are the h...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (perihilar and distal): Extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma blocks the main bile ducts outside the liver and shows itself as jaundice. Perihilar tumours need part of the liver removed with the duct and distal tumours a Whipple operation; where surgery is impossible, stenting relieves...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Extranodal marginal zone lymphoma of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT lymphoma): MALT lymphoma is a slow-growing lymphoma that starts in lymphoid tissue lining an organ, most often the stomach, where it is usually caused by long-standing Helicobacter pylori infection and can be cured with antibiotics alone. Other sites include the eye s...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma: An aggressive lymphoma of natural killer cells, always driven by Epstein-Barr virus, that destroys the tissues in the middle of the face: the nose, the palate and the sinuses. It is common in east Asia and Latin America and uncommon in Europe, and it is the...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Extrapulmonary neuroendocrine carcinoma: Extrapulmonary neuroendocrine carcinoma is the fast-growing, poorly differentiated form of neuroendocrine cancer arising outside the lung, most often in the bowel, oesophagus, stomach or pancreas. It behaves like small-cell lung cancer and is treated the sa...Open in Atlas onco.cc

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Familial adenomatous polyposis-associated colorectal cancer: In familial adenomatous polyposis a person inherits a fault in the APC gene and grows hundreds or thousands of polyps in the large bowel from their teens. Left alone, almost all of them become cancer by about 40, so the bowel is watched from childhood and u...Open in Atlas onco.cc
FLT3-mutated acute myeloid leukaemia: FLT3-mutated acute myeloid leukaemia carries a mutation in a growth-signal receptor that makes the leukaemia relapse quickly. Adding a FLT3 blocker to chemotherapy, midostaurin or quizartinib, lengthens life, and gilteritinib is the standard when the diseas...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Follicular lymphoma: Follicular lymphoma is the most common slow-growing lymphoma, defined in about 85% of cases by a BCL2 translocation. Most people live with it for decades, treated only when it causes problems; it can be controlled repeatedly with anti-CD20 antibodies, chemo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Follicular thyroid cancer: Follicular thyroid cancer looks like a benign nodule on a needle biopsy, so the diagnosis is usually made only after surgery. It spreads through the bloodstream rather than to neck nodes, is treated like papillary cancer with surgery and radioactive iodine,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Fumarate hydratase-deficient renal cell carcinoma (HLRCC-associated): Fumarate hydratase-deficient renal cell carcinoma is a rare, aggressive kidney cancer in which the FH gene is lost, most often because the person was born with a faulty copy as part of the HLRCC syndrome, which also causes skin and womb fibroids. It strikes...Open in Atlas onco.cc

G

Gallbladder adenocarcinoma: Adenocarcinoma is the usual form of gallbladder cancer, about nine in ten cases, starting in the mucus-making gland cells of the lining. Everything on the main gallbladder cancer page (causes, staging, surgery, chemotherapy with immunotherapy) is written ab...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Gallbladder cancer: Gallbladder cancer starts in the small bile-storing sac under the liver and is one of the biliary tract cancers. Most cases are found late, or by chance when a gallbladder is removed for gallstones. It is rare in the UK, with about 1,300 cases a year, and m...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Gastric & gastro-oesophageal junction cancer: A cancer with three new targets in five years: Claudin 18.2, FGFR2b, and HER2 with new ADCs, plus immunotherapy in first line.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Gastric MALT lymphoma: A slow-growing MALT lymphoma that grows in the lining of the stomach, usually caused by a long-standing infection with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. It is the one lymphoma that is often cured by a fortnight of antibiotics, and a single chromosome chang...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST): GIST is a sarcoma of the gut wall driven almost always by a KIT or PDGFRA mutation. It was the proof that a pill can control a solid tumour: imatinib turned a median survival of about a year into one of eight years or more, and the mutation now dictates whi...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Germ cell neoplasia in situ (GCNIS): Germ cell neoplasia in situ is the pre-cancer of testicular germ cell tumours: abnormal fetal-type germ cells sitting inside the seminiferous tubules, which will become seminoma or non-seminoma if left. It is found beside almost every testicular cancer and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Germ cell tumours of childhood and adolescence (extracranial and CNS): Germ cell tumours arise from the cells meant to become eggs or sperm and can appear in the gonads, lower back, chest or brain. They are among the most curable childhood cancers because they respond to cisplatin chemotherapy and release blood markers that ma...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Gestational trophoblastic neoplasia: Cancers that grow from placental tissue after a pregnancy. They make a hormone (hCG) that acts as a perfect blood test, and they were the first solid cancer ever cured by chemotherapy. Immunotherapy now rescues the few that resist drugs.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Glioma & glioblastoma: Gliomas are now diagnosed by molecular class, and three classes got their first targeted drugs in 2024-25 (vorasidenib for IDH-mutant glioma, tovorafenib for BRAF-altered paediatric glioma, dordaviprone for H3 K27M). Glioblastoma is the hardest to treat: su...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Glucagonoma: Glucagonoma is a very rare pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour that pours out the hormone glucagon, causing weight loss, diabetes and a distinctive migrating red rash. Because the rash is so characteristic, spotting it early can lead to diagnosis before the tu...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Goblet cell adenocarcinoma of the appendix: Goblet cell adenocarcinoma is a rare appendix cancer whose cells mix mucus-filled goblet cells with neuroendocrine features, once called goblet cell carcinoid but now classed and treated as an adenocarcinoma. It is removed by right hemicolectomy, given bowe...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Gonadotroph pituitary neuroendocrine tumour (non-functioning adenoma): A gonadotroph tumour is a pituitary tumour of the cells that normally make the fertility hormones, but it almost never secretes enough to cause symptoms, so it is found as a large non-functioning mass pressing on the optic nerves or by chance. Surgery throu...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Grade 3 well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumour: Grade 3 well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumours divide fast enough to be called grade 3 yet still look and behave like their slower relatives rather than like neuroendocrine carcinoma. Recognised as separate since 2017, they keep the somatostatin recepto...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Group 3 and group 4 medulloblastoma (non-WNT/non-SHH): Group 3 and group 4 medulloblastoma are the two commonest forms of this cerebellar brain tumour and the ones without a druggable driver. Group 3 strikes young children, often with extra copies of MYC and spread through the spinal fluid; group 4 affects olde...Open in Atlas onco.cc

H

Hairy cell leukaemia: Hairy cell leukaemia is a rare, slow B-cell leukaemia with a single defining mutation (BRAF V600E) that is unusually curable: one week of a purine analogue puts most people into remission for years, and BRAF drugs rescue those who relapse.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: Cancers of the mouth and throat, increasingly caused by HPV. Immunotherapy is first line for advanced disease and now used before surgery.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Hepatoblastoma: Hepatoblastoma is a childhood liver cancer, mostly of toddlers, cured in most standard-risk cases with cisplatin chemotherapy and surgery, including liver transplant when the tumour cannot be cut out. Sodium thiosulfate given after cisplatin halves the perm...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Hepatocellular carcinoma: Liver cancer almost always grows in a liver already damaged by hepatitis, alcohol or fatty liver disease. It is one of the most preventable cancers, and since 2020 immunotherapy combinations have roughly doubled how long people with advanced disease live.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Hepatosplenic T-cell lymphoma: Hepatosplenic T-cell lymphoma is a rare, very aggressive lymphoma of young men in which gamma-delta T cells fill the liver, spleen and bone marrow without forming lumps in the nodes. It is linked to long-term immune suppression, above all thiopurines with o...Open in Atlas onco.cc
HER2-amplified colorectal cancer: A few bowel cancers make too much of the HER2 protein, the same target as in HER2-positive breast cancer. Two HER2 drugs together, tucatinib and trastuzumab, shrink about four in ten of these tumours after chemotherapy has failed, and the antibody-drug conj...Open in Atlas onco.cc
HER2-low and HER2-ultralow metastatic breast cancer: HER2-low is not a new kind of breast cancer but a new way of reading an old test: tumours once called HER2-negative that carry a little HER2 protein. That trace is enough for the antibody-drug conjugate trastuzumab deruxtecan to deliver its chemotherapy pay...Open in Atlas onco.cc
HER2-mutant non-small-cell lung cancer: HER2-mutant lung cancer carries a mutation in the same receptor that drives HER2-positive breast cancer, but the breast cancer antibodies alone did little here. The antibody-drug conjugate trastuzumab deruxtecan shrinks about half of tumours after chemother...Open in Atlas onco.cc
HER2-positive breast cancer: HER2-positive breast cancer was once the most aggressive subtype and is now one of the most treatable, thanks to trastuzumab and, more recently, Enhertu.Open in Atlas onco.cc
HER2-positive breast cancer with brain metastases: The brain is the weak point of HER2-positive breast cancer: antibodies control the rest of the body but cross poorly into the brain, so up to half of patients with advanced disease develop brain metastases. Tucatinib with trastuzumab and capecitabine was th...Open in Atlas onco.cc
HER2-positive gastric cancer: HER2-positive gastric cancer overexpresses the HER2 growth receptor and is treated with trastuzumab added to chemotherapy, now usually with pembrolizumab as well. After progression the antibody-drug conjugate trastuzumab deruxtecan gives responses that plai...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Hereditary pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma (SDHx, VHL, RET, NF1, MAX and TMEM127): Hereditary pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma is the inherited form of these adrenaline-producing tumours, caused by a fault in one of more than a dozen genes, most often SDHB, SDHD, VHL and RET. Knowing the gene changes care: SDHB carriers have the highest...Open in Atlas onco.cc
High-grade B-cell lymphoma with MYC and BCL2 rearrangements (double-hit lymphoma): An aggressive B-cell lymphoma defined not by how it looks but by two genetic faults in the same cell: a rearrangement of MYC, which drives growth, and one of BCL2, which blocks the cell from dying. It behaves worse than ordinary diffuse large B-cell lymphom...Open in Atlas onco.cc
High-grade serous ovarian cancer: High-grade serous cancer is the common, aggressive form of ovarian cancer, now known to start in the fallopian tube. It is treated with surgery and platinum chemotherapy, and maintenance PARP inhibitors have changed its course for the half of patients whose...Open in Atlas onco.cc
High-risk acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in children (high-risk B-ALL and T-ALL): High-risk childhood leukaemia means a child aged ten or over, a very high white cell count, T-cell disease, spread to the brain or testes, or adverse genetics, and it is treated with longer and more intensive chemotherapy. Most children are still cured; the...Open in Atlas onco.cc
High-risk early HR-positive breast cancer: Most hormone-driven breast cancers are cured with surgery, radiotherapy and five to ten years of endocrine tablets. Women whose tumours are larger, higher grade or have reached the lymph nodes face a higher risk of relapse: two to three years of a CDK4/6 in...Open in Atlas onco.cc
High-risk gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (FIGO score 7 or more, including ultra-high-risk): High-risk gestational trophoblastic neoplasia is the aggressive form of this pregnancy-related cancer, usually choriocarcinoma that has spread to the lungs, liver or brain and produces very high hCG. It is treated with the multi-drug EMA-CO regimen, started...Open in Atlas onco.cc
High-risk neuroblastoma: High-risk neuroblastoma has spread widely in a child over 18 months old or carries extra copies of the MYCN gene. Treatment lasts about 18 months and uses every tool: chemotherapy, surgery, high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell rescue, radiotherapy, and the...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes: Higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes behave like a slow leukaemia and often become one. Azacitidine lengthens life and a donor stem cell transplant is the only cure; every attempt to improve on azacitidine in a large trial, including the venetoclax combina...Open in Atlas onco.cc
HIV-associated (AIDS-related) lymphomas: People living with HIV have a raised risk of aggressive lymphomas, driven by immune suppression and viruses such as Epstein-Barr virus. The transformation of the last two decades is that, with antiretroviral therapy continued through treatment, these lympho...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Hodgkin lymphoma: Hodgkin lymphoma is one of the most curable cancers, where the goal is now to cure with less toxicity, using brentuximab and, from 2026, first-line nivolumab.Open in Atlas onco.cc
HPV-associated vulvar squamous cell carcinoma: HPV-associated vulvar cancer is the type of vulvar squamous cell cancer caused by persistent HPV infection, growing out of the precancer called usual-type VIN and marked by the p16 protein. It tends to affect younger women, responds better to radiotherapy a...Open in Atlas onco.cc
HPV-independent vulvar squamous cell carcinoma (p53-mutant): HPV-independent vulvar cancer is the commoner type of vulvar squamous cell cancer, arising in older women from the chronic skin condition lichen sclerosus rather than from HPV, and marked by faults in the p53 gene. It recurs locally far more often than the...Open in Atlas onco.cc
HPV-negative head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (including HPV-negative oropharyngeal cancer): Head and neck cancers caused by tobacco and alcohol rather than HPV are harder to cure: surgery or cisplatin chemoradiation is the mainstay, immunotherapy given around surgery (KEYNOTE-689) or after it (NIVOPOSTOP) has begun to help, and pembrolizumab is th...Open in Atlas onco.cc
HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer: Throat cancers caused by HPV are usually cured with chemoradiation or robotic surgery, so trials now ask how much treatment can be taken away: swapping cisplatin for cetuximab failed, cutting the radiation dose has worked only after surgery so far, and bloo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer: HR-positive breast cancer is the most common breast cancer, driven by oestrogen. It was treated for years with hormone-blocking pills, now joined by CDK4/6 inhibitors, PI3K-pathway drugs, degraders, and ADCs.Open in Atlas onco.cc
HR-positive metastatic breast cancer after CDK4/6 inhibitors: When hormone-positive breast cancer grows through a CDK4/6 inhibitor, a blood test picks the next drug. Tumours with an acquired ESR1 mutation respond to the oral degraders elacestrant, camizestrant and imlunestrant; tumours with PIK3CA, AKT1 or PTEN change...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Hyperparathyroidism-jaw tumour syndrome (CDC73-related parathyroid carcinoma): Hyperparathyroidism-jaw tumour syndrome is an inherited condition in which a faulty CDC73 gene causes parathyroid tumours, and in about one in five people a parathyroid carcinoma, together with bony tumours of the jaw and kidney and womb growths. It matters...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Hypopharyngeal cancer: Cancer of the hypopharynx, the funnel behind the voice box, is the head and neck cancer with the worst outlook because it grows silently and spreads to the neck early. Treatment is chemoradiation to keep the larynx where possible, or removal of the larynx a...Open in Atlas onco.cc

I

IDH1- and IDH2-mutated acute myeloid leukaemia: IDH-mutated acute myeloid leukaemia has a faulty metabolic enzyme that floods cells with a chemical that blocks maturation. Pills that shut the enzyme off, ivosidenib for IDH1 and enasidenib or olutasidenib for IDH2 and IDH1, let the leukaemia cells mature,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Imatinib-resistant GIST: Imatinib-resistant GIST is disease that has grown through the first drug, usually because the tumour has acquired a second KIT mutation that imatinib cannot block. Sunitinib, regorafenib and ripretinib are given in turn; ripretinib, in the INVICTUS trial, e...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Immunomodulatory triple-negative breast cancer (IM): Immunomodulatory triple-negative breast cancers are the ones packed with immune cells. The 2016 re-analysis showed the signature comes from those lymphocytes rather than the tumour, so today the same idea is captured by counting tumour-infiltrating lymphocy...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Incidental gallbladder cancer (found after cholecystectomy): Incidental gallbladder cancer is cancer the pathologist finds in a gallbladder removed for gallstones or inflammation, when nobody suspected it. It is the commonest way this cancer is found early enough to cure. Whether a second operation is needed depends...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Indolent and smouldering systemic mastocytosis: Indolent systemic mastocytosis is the common, slow form of this rare blood disorder, in which KIT-mutant mast cells build up in the marrow and skin and release histamine that causes flushing, itching, stomach pain, bone thinning and sometimes severe allergi...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Infant acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (KMT2A-rearranged, under one year): Leukaemia diagnosed in the first year of life is a different disease from leukaemia in older children: most cases carry a broken KMT2A gene and respond poorly to chemotherapy, and fewer than half of infants were cured for twenty years. One course of the imm...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Inflammatory breast cancer: Inflammatory breast cancer does not usually form a lump. The breast becomes red, swollen, warm and heavy over weeks, with skin thickened like orange peel, because cancer cells have blocked the lymph channels in the skin. It is often mistaken for infection,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumour (IMT): IMT is a rare tumour, grouped with the sarcomas, of spindle cells mixed with inflammatory cells, most often in the lung or abdomen of children and young adults. Surgery cures most, and about half carry an ALK gene fusion, so the ALK-blocking pill crizotinib...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Intermediate hepatocellular carcinoma (BCLC B): Intermediate hepatocellular carcinoma is several tumours inside a working liver, too many to cut out but with no spread beyond it. The standard treatment for two decades has been chemoembolisation through the hepatic artery, and trials now show that adding...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Intermediate-risk neuroblastoma: Intermediate-risk neuroblastoma sits between the tumours that go away on their own and the high-risk disease that needs everything. A few cycles of moderate chemotherapy followed by surgery cure most children, and trials have spent twenty years showing how...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm and other pancreatic cystic precursors: Intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms are fluid-filled growths in the pancreatic ducts that make mucus and can slowly turn into pancreatic cancer, one of the few chances to catch pancreatic cancer before it starts. Most are watched with scans for years,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma: Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma starts in the small bile ducts inside the liver and usually appears as a liver mass rather than causing jaundice. It is the biliary cancer with the most drug targets: FGFR2 fusions treated with pemigatinib or futibatinib, IDH...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Intravascular large B-cell lymphoma: Intravascular large B-cell lymphoma is a rare form of large B-cell lymphoma in which the cancer cells grow inside small blood vessels rather than forming lumps, so it causes fevers, confusion, skin patches or breathlessness and is often found late or only a...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Invasive breast carcinoma of no special type (invasive ductal carcinoma): Invasive carcinoma of no special type, still widely called invasive ductal carcinoma, is the ordinary form of breast cancer and by far the most common. The name means the tumour has no special pattern that would put it in one of the rarer types; everything...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Invasive carcinoma arising in an intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN-associated carcinoma): IPMN-associated carcinoma is pancreatic cancer that has grown out of a mucus-producing cyst in the pancreatic duct. Because the cyst is often being watched, the cancer is found smaller and earlier, and about four in ten patients are alive five years after s...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Invasive cribriform carcinoma of the breast: Invasive cribriform carcinoma is a rare, low-grade type of breast cancer whose cells grow in sieve-like nests, closely related to tubular carcinoma. In its pure form it has an excellent outlook, with no deaths from the cancer in the defining series, and it...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Invasive lobular carcinoma of the breast: Invasive lobular carcinoma is the second most common type of breast cancer, about one in seven cases. Its cells have lost the glue protein E-cadherin, so they spread in single files rather than forming a lump, which makes it hard to see on mammograms and to...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Invasive micropapillary carcinoma of the breast: Invasive micropapillary carcinoma is a rare type of breast cancer in which small clusters of cells float inside-out in empty spaces. It spreads to the lymph nodes far more often than ordinary breast cancer of the same size, but once that is allowed for its...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Invasive mucinous adenocarcinoma of the lung: Invasive mucinous adenocarcinoma is a type of lung cancer whose cells look like stomach or bowel lining and fill the air spaces with mucus, often appearing as pneumonia-like shadows on a scan. Most cases carry a KRAS mutation, and many of the rest carry a g...Open in Atlas onco.cc

K

Kaposi sarcoma: Kaposi sarcoma is a blood-vessel cancer caused by the herpesvirus HHV-8, made famous by the AIDS epidemic. In people with HIV, antiretroviral therapy alone often shrinks it; liposomal doxorubicin or paclitaxel treat advanced disease, and it remains among th...Open in Atlas onco.cc
KIT exon 11-mutant GIST: Most GISTs are driven by a mutation in exon 11 of the KIT gene, which keeps the KIT growth receptor switched on. Imatinib blocks it: given for three years after surgery in higher-risk tumours it prevents relapse and extends life, and in metastatic disease i...Open in Atlas onco.cc
KRAS G12C-mutant colorectal cancer: KRAS G12C bowel cancer carries a mutation that was undruggable for forty years. The first KRAS drugs work only weakly on their own in the bowel, because the tumour switches EGFR back on, so they are given with an anti-EGFR antibody: sotorasib with panitumum...Open in Atlas onco.cc
KRAS G12C-mutant non-small-cell lung cancer: KRAS G12C lung cancer carries a mutation that was thought impossible to drug for forty years. Sotorasib and adagrasib now shrink about four in ten tumours after chemotherapy and immunotherapy, though the benefit is measured in months, and newer inhibitors a...Open in Atlas onco.cc
KRAS G12C-mutant pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: KRAS G12C pancreatic cancer is the small slice of pancreatic cancer whose KRAS mutation happens to be the one that the first KRAS drugs were built for. Sotorasib and adagrasib, approved for lung cancer, shrink a share of these tumours after chemotherapy and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
KRAS wild-type pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: KRAS wild-type pancreatic cancer is the one in ten pancreatic cancers without the KRAS mutation that drives the rest. Instead many carry a different switched-on gene, often a fusion involving NRG1, NTRK, ALK, ROS1, FGFR2 or RET, or a BRAF change, and severa...Open in Atlas onco.cc

L

Lactotroph pituitary neuroendocrine tumour (prolactinoma): A prolactinoma is a pituitary tumour of the cells that make prolactin, the milk hormone; it is the commonest hormone-producing pituitary tumour and causes missed periods, infertility, milk production or, in men, low testosterone. Almost uniquely among tumou...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH): Langerhans cell histiocytosis is a disorder in which a small group of immune cells with a faulty growth signal (most often a BRAF mutation) pile up in bone, skin, pituitary or organs. It ranges from a single bone lesion that heals after biopsy to a life-thr...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Large cell carcinoma of the lung: Large cell carcinoma is the name for a non-small-cell lung cancer whose cells look neither glandular nor squamous under the microscope. Since 2015 pathologists use protein stains to sort most of these tumours into adenocarcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma of the lung: Large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma is a lung cancer that looks like a large-cell tumour under the microscope but has the neuroendocrine markers and the fast, aggressive behaviour of small-cell lung cancer. It sits between the two halves of the usual split,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Laryngeal and hypopharyngeal cancer: Cancer of the voice box, a head and neck cancer, announces itself with hoarseness and is highly curable when caught early, by laser surgery or radiotherapy that preserve the voice. Advanced disease is treated with chemoradiation to keep the larynx where pos...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Leiomyosarcoma: Leiomyosarcoma is a cancer of smooth muscle, most often in the womb, the abdomen behind the bowel or the wall of a large vein. Surgery is the only cure; for spread disease, doxorubicin-based chemotherapy, trabectedin and gemcitabine-docetaxel are the standa...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Leukaemia (all types): Leukaemia means cancer of the blood-forming cells, but the four main types share little beyond the name: acute lymphoblastic and acute myeloid leukaemia are emergencies treated with intensive therapy, while chronic lymphocytic and chronic myeloid leukaemia...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Leydig cell tumour of the testis: Leydig cell tumour is the commonest testicular tumour that is not a germ cell tumour; it grows from the hormone-making cells between the tubules. It often makes testosterone or oestrogen, causing early puberty in boys or breast growth in men, and nine in te...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Limited-stage small-cell lung cancer: Small-cell lung cancer that is still confined to one side of the chest is treated to cure with chemotherapy and radiotherapy given together. Adding two years of the immunotherapy antibody durvalumab afterwards lengthened median survival from under three yea...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Lip cancer: Cancer of the lip is really a skin cancer of the sun-exposed lower lip, usually found early because it can be seen. A small operation or radiotherapy cures most people, and reconstruction keeps the mouth working.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Liposarcoma: Liposarcoma is a cancer of fat cells that comes in four different forms: two driven by extra copies of the MDM2 gene, one by a fusion gene that makes it unusually sensitive to radiotherapy and trabectedin, and one that behaves like other aggressive sarcomas...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS): Lobular carcinoma in situ is not an invasive breast cancer but a marker that a woman is at higher risk of one: abnormal cells fill the milk-producing lobules without spreading. About one in five women develop breast cancer within ten years, in either breast...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Localised adrenocortical carcinoma (ENSAT stage I to III, resectable): Localised adrenocortical carcinoma is adrenal cortex cancer still confined to the adrenal gland and its surroundings that surgery can remove, the only treatment that cures it. Afterwards the adrenal-specific drug mitotane is given to patients whose tumour h...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Localised anal squamous cell carcinoma (stage I to III): Localised anal cancer is squamous cell cancer of the anal canal that has not spread beyond the pelvis and groin, one of the few cancers cured mainly by chemotherapy and radiotherapy together rather than by surgery. Fluorouracil with mitomycin during radioth...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Localised penile cancer (organ-confined, node-negative): Localised penile cancer is squamous cell cancer confined to the penis with no spread to the groin lymph nodes, and the aim of treatment is to remove the tumour while keeping as much of the penis as possible. Precancer and small tumours are treated with crea...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Localised prostate cancer, high and very high risk: High-risk prostate cancer has Grade Group 4 or 5 disease, a PSA above 20 or a tumour growing beyond the gland. It is still curable, but needs radiotherapy with two to three years of hormone therapy, or surgery followed by radiotherapy, and adding abirateron...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Localised prostate cancer, intermediate risk: Intermediate-risk prostate cancer has Grade Group 2 or 3 disease, a PSA between 10 and 20 or a tumour that fills more of the gland. Surgery or radiotherapy cure most men; the favourable half can sometimes be watched, and the unfavourable half is given a few...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Localised prostate cancer, very low and low risk: Low-risk prostate cancer is Grade Group 1 disease confined to the gland with a PSA under 10. It grows so slowly that watching it closely is the recommended first choice, and most men who choose surveillance never need treatment.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Localised small bowel adenocarcinoma (stage I to III, resected): Localised small bowel adenocarcinoma is cancer of the duodenum, jejunum or ileum that has not spread beyond nearby lymph nodes and can be removed by surgery, the only cure. Duodenal tumours need a Whipple operation and tumours further along a segmental rese...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Locally advanced and metastatic basal cell carcinoma: Locally advanced basal cell carcinoma is a skin cancer that has grown so large or deep, usually on the face, that surgery or radiotherapy can no longer remove it without unacceptable damage. Almost all these tumours depend on the hedgehog growth pathway, an...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Locally advanced cervical cancer: Locally advanced cervical cancer has grown beyond the cervix or into the pelvic lymph nodes but not to distant organs. It is treated with cisplatin chemotherapy given alongside external radiotherapy and brachytherapy, and two recent trials have improved on...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Locally advanced unresectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: Locally advanced pancreatic cancer has grown around the arteries or veins behind the pancreas so that it cannot be removed, but it has not spread to other organs. Chemotherapy is the main treatment, joined in 2026 by a device that delivers electric fields t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (stage III to IVA): Locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma is nasopharyngeal cancer, the Epstein-Barr-virus-driven cancer behind the nose, that has grown into nearby structures or neck lymph nodes but not further. It is treated without surgery, by precise radiotherap...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Low-grade appendiceal mucinous neoplasm and pseudomyxoma peritonei: Low-grade appendiceal mucinous neoplasm is a slow-growing appendiceal cancer that makes mucus, and when it bursts it spreads jelly through the abdomen as pseudomyxoma peritonei. It rarely spreads through blood or lymph, so it is treated by stripping all vis...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Low-grade serous ovarian cancer: Low-grade serous cancer is the slow-growing, chemotherapy-resistant cousin of the common ovarian cancer. Surgery and hormone therapy are its mainstays, and MEK inhibitors, alone or combined with a FAK inhibitor, are the first drugs shown to shrink it reliably.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Low-risk gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (FIGO score 0 to 6): Low-risk gestational trophoblastic neoplasia is the mild form of this rare pregnancy-related cancer, usually found when the pregnancy hormone hCG fails to fall after removal of a molar pregnancy. It is cured in almost every woman with a single chemotherapy...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Low-risk neuroblastoma (INRG very low and low risk, including stage MS): Low-risk neuroblastoma is the form found in infants and young children whose tumour has not spread beyond its site or, in the special stage MS pattern, has spread only to the liver, skin and a little marrow. Many of these tumours shrink and disappear on the...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes: Lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes rarely turn into leukaemia quickly; the problem is anaemia and the transfusions it demands. Erythropoietin, then luspatercept (COMMANDS) and the telomerase blocker imetelstat (IMerge), free many patients from transfusion...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Luminal androgen receptor triple-negative breast cancer (LAR): Luminal androgen receptor cancers are triple-negative breast cancers that behave like hormone-driven tumours run by the male hormone receptor instead of oestrogen. They are less proliferative, respond less well to chemotherapy, and have shown modest benefit...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Lung cancer (all types): Lung cancer splits into non-small-cell disease, about 85 percent of it, and small-cell disease, which was 6.6 percent of English cases in 2024 and 9.1 percent of Welsh ones (National Lung Cancer Audit, State of the Nation 2026); the two behave and are treat...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Lung neuroendocrine tumours (typical and atypical carcinoid): Lung neuroendocrine tumours, called typical and atypical carcinoids, are slow-growing tumours of the airways that are usually cured by surgery. When they spread, everolimus is the one drug tested in a randomised trial for this site, cabozantinib was approve...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Lymphoepithelial carcinoma of the lung: Lymphoepithelial carcinoma of the lung is a rare lung cancer, seen mostly in East Asian non-smokers, in which cancer cells sit in a dense crowd of immune cells and usually carry the Epstein-Barr virus, like nasopharyngeal cancer. It is treated as a squamous...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Lymphomatoid granulomatosis: Lymphomatoid granulomatosis is a rare Epstein-Barr virus-driven disease of B cells that invades and destroys blood vessels, almost always in the lungs and often the brain and skin, in people whose immune control of the virus is weak. Low-grade disease can b...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Lymphomatoid papulosis: A skin condition that keeps producing crops of small red bumps which ulcerate, crust and heal on their own over a few weeks, leaving small scars, and then come back. The biopsy looks like an aggressive lymphoma and the disease behaves nothing like one: nobo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Lynch syndrome-associated colorectal cancer: Lynch syndrome-associated bowel cancer is bowel cancer in someone born with a fault in one of the genes that proofread DNA copying errors. The tumours tend to arise younger and on the right side, they carry the mismatch repair defect that makes immunotherap...Open in Atlas onco.cc

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Male breast cancer: Men get breast cancer too, usually a hormone-sensitive kind found as a lump near the nipple. It is treated much as in women, with surgery, radiotherapy and tamoxifen, and inherited BRCA2 mutations are found often enough that every man diagnosed is offered g...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumour (MPNST): Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumour is a sarcoma that grows from the covering of a nerve, most often in people with neurofibromatosis type 1 when a benign plexiform neurofibroma turns malignant. Surgery with radiotherapy is the only cure; chemotherapy...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mantle cell lymphoma: An uncommon B-cell lymphoma driven by cyclin D1 that used to behave badly in almost everyone. BTK inhibitors, CAR-T and now BCL2 drugs have changed it from chemotherapy-plus-transplant to targeted combinations.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Marginal zone lymphoma: Marginal zone lymphoma is a slow B-cell lymphoma that often grows where the body has been fighting a chronic infection: the stomach with Helicobacter pylori, the eye, the skin or the spleen. Curing the infection cures many early cases; the rest are treated...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mediastinal germ cell tumour: A mediastinal germ cell tumour is a germ cell tumour that starts in the chest, between the lungs, rather than in the testis. Seminomas here are cured almost as often as testicular seminoma, but non-seminomas of the chest are the hardest germ cell tumours to...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mediastinal grey zone lymphoma: A lymphoma of the chest that sits between two diseases: it has some of the features of primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma and some of classic Hodgkin lymphoma, and a pathologist cannot put it cleanly in either. It is recognised as an entity of its own, and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Medullary carcinoma of the colon: Medullary carcinoma is a very rare form of bowel cancer in which sheets of poorly formed cells are packed with immune cells; almost all cases are mismatch-repair deficient and it occurs mostly in older women on the right side. Despite its ugly appearance it...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Medullary thyroid cancer: Medullary thyroid cancer comes from the calcitonin-making C cells, not the thyroid hormone cells, so radioactive iodine does not work. Surgery is the only cure, a quarter of cases run in families through the RET gene, and the RET-selective drug selpercatini...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Medulloblastoma: Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant childhood brain tumour, arising in the cerebellum. Surgery, radiation to the whole brain and spine, and chemotherapy cure about 70%, at a heavy cost to thinking and growth; treatment is now being tailored to four...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Melanoma: The skin cancer that proved immunotherapy works: half of advanced patients now live 10 years. Also the first with an approved TIL therapy, an oncolytic virus, and a positive phase 3 personalised vaccine.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Melanoma of the urethra: Melanoma of the urethra is a very rare urethral cancer that starts in pigment cells of the urethral lining, usually near its outer opening, in older adults. It is a form of mucosal melanoma, so it is removed surgically and, when it spreads, treated with the...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Meningioma: Meningiomas grow from the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord rather than from the brain itself. Most are slow and benign and are either watched or removed; radiotherapy or radiosurgery treats what surgery cannot reach or what grows back, and no dr...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Merkel cell carcinoma: Merkel cell carcinoma is a rare, fast-growing skin cancer, usually caused by a common virus (Merkel cell polyomavirus) or by sun damage. Once it had spread there was no treatment that worked; PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy now gives lasting responses in about hal...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mesenchymal stem-like triple-negative breast cancer (MSL): Mesenchymal stem-like was one of the six original subtypes of triple-negative breast cancer, marked by stem-cell and low-proliferation genes. Five years later the same group showed the signal came from stromal cells mixed into the sample rather than the can...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mesenchymal triple-negative breast cancer (M): Mesenchymal triple-negative breast cancers have switched on the programme cells use to migrate (epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition). They overlap with claudin-low and metaplastic tumours, respond to chemotherapy less well than basal-like 1 tumours, and ar...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mesothelioma: An asbestos-caused cancer of the lung lining. Immunotherapy doublets replaced chemotherapy in 2020, and mesothelin CAR-T is under study.Open in Atlas onco.cc
MET exon 14 and MET-amplified non-small-cell lung cancer: MET-driven lung cancer comes in three forms: an exon 14 skipping mutation treated with the pills capmatinib or tepotinib, MET amplification that often arises as an escape route from EGFR drugs, and high c-Met protein levels that the antibody-drug conjugate...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Metaplastic breast carcinoma: Metaplastic breast cancer is a rare form in which part of the tumour has changed into another tissue type, such as squamous skin-like cells, spindle cells or bone and cartilage. Most are triple-negative and they do worse than other triple-negative cancers,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Metastatic and recurrent anal squamous cell carcinoma: Metastatic anal cancer is squamous cell anal cancer that has spread to the liver, lungs or distant lymph nodes, or come back where surgery can no longer remove it. Carboplatin with paclitaxel became the standard first treatment after the InterAACT trial, th...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Metastatic cancer (cancer that has spread): Metastatic cancer means the original cancer has spread to other parts of the body, most often the bones, liver, lungs or brain. It keeps the name of where it started, is treated with therapies that reach the whole body, and can increasingly be controlled fo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer: Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer is disease that grows despite castrate testosterone. Sequenced treatments now include androgen receptor inhibitors, docetaxel and cabazitaxel, PARP inhibitors for men with BRCA-type mutations, the radioligand...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer: Metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer is disease that has spread but still responds to lowering testosterone. Hormone therapy alone is no longer enough: adding an androgen receptor inhibitor, and docetaxel for high-volume disease, lengthens life by y...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: Metastatic pancreatic cancer has spread beyond the pancreas, usually to the liver, and is treated with chemotherapy rather than surgery. Three combination regimens lengthen life, a minority of patients qualify for targeted drugs chosen by tumour or inherite...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Metastatic pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma: Metastatic pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma is disease that has spread to bone, lymph nodes, liver or lungs, the only way these adrenaline-producing tumours are called malignant. It is often slow, so treatment starts with blood pressure control and watchi...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Metastatic triple-negative breast cancer: The treatment of triple-negative breast cancer that has spread has been transformed since 2020, though it is not yet curable. By PD-L1 score, first treatment is pembrolizumab with chemotherapy or with sacituzumab govitecan, or datopotamab deruxtecan or saci...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Micronodular thymoma with lymphoid stroma: Micronodular thymoma with lymphoid stroma is a rare, benign-behaving thymoma made of small nests of spindle-shaped epithelial cells separated by abundant B lymphocytes, unlike other thymomas whose lymphocytes are T cells. It is cured by surgery; its curiosi...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Micropapillary adenocarcinoma of the colon and rectum: Micropapillary adenocarcinoma is bowel cancer in which some of the tumour grows as tiny clusters of cells floating in empty spaces, with the cells turned inside out so the surface that normally faces the bowel faces outwards instead. It is a pattern that go...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Microsatellite-unstable (MSI-high) gastric cancer: Microsatellite-unstable gastric cancer has lost its DNA mismatch repair machinery, carries thousands of mutations and is unusually visible to the immune system. It responds strongly to checkpoint antibodies, may gain little from chemotherapy, and in early-s...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mismatch repair deficient (MSI-high) pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: Mismatch repair deficient pancreatic cancer is the rare pancreatic cancer whose cells cannot fix spelling errors in DNA and so carry thousands of mutations. That makes it one of the few pancreatic cancers that immunotherapy works against, and pembrolizumab...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mismatch-repair deficient (MSI-high) colorectal cancer: Mismatch-repair deficient bowel cancer has lost its DNA spell-checker, so it carries thousands of mutations that the immune system can recognise. Immunotherapy alone controls most metastatic cases for years and makes most localised tumours disappear before...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mismatch-repair-deficient endometrial cancer: Mismatch-repair-deficient endometrial cancer has lost the machinery that corrects copying errors in DNA, so it accumulates thousands of mutations that make it visible to the immune system. Adding dostarlimab or pembrolizumab to chemotherapy in advanced dise...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mixed-phenotype acute leukaemia: Mixed-phenotype acute leukaemia is a rare acute leukaemia whose cells carry markers of both lymphoid and myeloid lines, so it fits neither acute lymphoblastic nor acute myeloid leukaemia. Pooled evidence favours starting with the drugs used for acute lympho...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Monomorphic epitheliotropic intestinal T-cell lymphoma: An aggressive T-cell lymphoma of the small bowel that looks and presents much like the lymphoma that complicates coeliac disease but has no connection with coeliac disease at all. It was separated out of that diagnosis in 2016, it is made of monotonous smal...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mucinous adenocarcinoma of the colon and rectum: Mucinous adenocarcinoma is a form of bowel cancer, about one in ten cases, in which more than half the tumour is made of mucus produced by the cancer cells. It favours the right side of the colon, is often mismatch-repair deficient, tends to be found at a l...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mucinous carcinoma of the breast: Mucinous carcinoma is a rare type of breast cancer in which the cancer cells float in pools of mucus they have made. It is usually hormone-receptor positive, slow-growing and less likely to reach the lymph nodes than ordinary breast cancer, so its outlook i...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mucinous carcinoma of the gallbladder: Mucinous carcinoma is a rare gallbladder cancer in which the cancer cells sit in pools of mucus that make up more than half the tumour. It affects men almost as often as women, is larger than usual at diagnosis, and often presents like an acute gallbladder...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mucinous cystic neoplasm of the pancreas with associated invasive carcinoma (MCN-associated carcinoma): MCN-associated carcinoma is pancreatic cancer that has developed inside a mucinous cystic neoplasm, a thick-walled cyst with ovary-like tissue in its wall that occurs almost only in women, usually in the tail of the pancreas. Most such cysts are benign when...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mucinous ovarian cancer: Mucinous ovarian cancer is rare, usually confined to one large ovary at diagnosis and cured by surgery. Its genetics resemble bowel cancer more than ovarian cancer, and pathologists must first rule out a spread from the gut before making the diagnosis.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mucinous tubular and spindle cell carcinoma of the kidney: Mucinous tubular and spindle cell carcinoma is a rare, usually slow-growing kidney cancer, commoner in women, whose cells form small tubes and spindles in a mucus-rich background. It is driven by loss of the Hippo growth-control pathway rather than the faul...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mucoepidermoid carcinoma: Mucoepidermoid carcinoma is the most common salivary gland cancer and, for most people, one of the most curable: low-grade tumours are removed surgically and rarely return, while high-grade tumours need radiotherapy after surgery and are treated like other...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mucosal melanoma: Mucosal melanoma grows on the moist linings of the nose, mouth, anus or genital tract rather than on sun-exposed skin, so it is found late and carries fewer of the mutations that make skin melanoma visible to the immune system. Immunotherapy helps less ofte...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Multiple endocrine neoplasia syndromes (MEN1, MEN2, MEN4): The MEN syndromes are inherited faults in a single gene that cause tumours in several hormone glands over a lifetime. Because the gene can be found in childhood, at-risk relatives can be tested, watched and in MEN2 have the thyroid removed before cancer dev...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN1): MEN1 is an inherited condition, one of the multiple endocrine neoplasia syndromes, in which a faulty MEN1 gene lets tumours grow in the parathyroid glands, the pancreas and the pituitary. Each tumour is treated much as it would be in anyone else, but becaus...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 (MEN2A and MEN2B): MEN2 is an inherited condition, one of the multiple endocrine neoplasia syndromes, in which a faulty RET gene causes medullary thyroid cancer in almost every carrier, often with adrenal tumours and overactive parathyroids. Because the thyroid cancer is so p...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Multiple myeloma: Multiple myeloma is a plasma-cell cancer with more new drug classes than any other: proteasome inhibitors, IMiDs, CD38 antibodies, BCMA CAR-T, bispecifics, and an ADC.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Multisystem Langerhans cell histiocytosis (with or without risk-organ involvement): Multisystem Langerhans cell histiocytosis is the severe form of this rare histiocytosis, in which the abnormal cells involve several organs at once, most dangerously the liver, spleen and bone marrow of infants. It is treated with a year of vinblastine and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Muscle-invasive and advanced bladder cancer: Once bladder cancer has grown into the muscle it needs more than scraping out: chemotherapy then removal of the bladder, or chemoradiation to keep it. For cancer that has spread, the antibody-drug conjugate enfortumab vedotin with pembrolizumab has replaced...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Mycosis fungoides: The commonest cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, and a disease that behaves like a long-term skin condition for most of the people who have it: flat scaly patches that have often been treated as eczema or psoriasis for years before anyone takes a biopsy. In its ear...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Myelodysplastic syndromes / neoplasms (MDS): Bone-marrow disorders where blood cells are made badly and too few reach the blood; a third progress to acute leukaemia. Treatment ranges from transfusions and growth factors to hypomethylating drugs and, for the fit, transplant.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Myeloid leukaemia of Down syndrome: Myeloid leukaemia of Down syndrome is a form of acute myeloid leukaemia in young children with Down syndrome, driven by a GATA1 mutation on top of the extra chromosome 21 and often preceded by a transient leukaemia-like illness in the newborn. Its cells are...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Myeloproliferative neoplasms (PV, ET, myelofibrosis): Myeloproliferative neoplasms are slow-growing blood cancers in which the marrow overproduces red cells (polycythaemia vera), platelets (essential thrombocythaemia) or scar tissue (myelofibrosis). Almost all carry a mutation in JAK2, CALR or MPL; treatment a...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Myxofibrosarcoma: Myxofibrosarcoma is a sarcoma of older people that grows just beneath the skin of the limbs and sends invisible tails along the tissue planes, so it comes back after surgery more often than any other sarcoma. Wide surgery guided by MRI, usually with radioth...Open in Atlas onco.cc

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Nasal cavity and paranasal sinus cancers (including esthesioneuroblastoma): Cancers of the nose and sinuses are a mixed group, from squamous carcinoma to the nerve-derived esthesioneuroblastoma and the aggressive undifferentiated carcinoma SNUC. Surgery through the nose with an endoscope followed by precise radiotherapy has replace...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma: A cancer at the back of the nose caused largely by the Epstein-Barr virus and common in southern China and Southeast Asia. Radiation cures most early cases; adding chemotherapy and, recently, PD-1 immunotherapy has improved outcomes in advanced disease, and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Neuroblastoma (paediatric): Neuroblastoma is a childhood nerve-cell cancer where anti-GD2 antibodies and, recently, GD2 CAR-T have improved survival in high-risk disease.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Neuroendocrine and small-cell prostate cancer: Neuroendocrine prostate cancer is a form that has stopped depending on the androgen receptor, either from the start or after years of hormone therapy. It no longer shows up on PSA, spreads to the liver and brain, and is treated with the platinum chemotherap...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Neuroendocrine carcinoma of the gallbladder: Neuroendocrine carcinoma is a rare, fast-growing form of gallbladder cancer made of small cell or large cell hormone-type cells, often mixed with ordinary adenocarcinoma. It is usually advanced when found and median survival in the largest series was six to...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Neuroendocrine neoplasms of the breast: Neuroendocrine neoplasms of the breast are rare breast cancers whose cells make hormone-like granules, ranging from slow-growing tumours to small cell carcinoma like that of the lung. They are easily mistaken for ordinary breast cancer or for spread from el...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Neuroendocrine tumours: A family of usually slow-growing tumours that start in hormone-producing cells of the gut, pancreas and lungs. They pioneered the idea of using the same molecule to see a tumour on a scan and then to treat it with radiation.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, transplant-eligible: Fit patients with newly diagnosed myeloma receive four drugs at once, then their own stem cells are collected, they are given high-dose chemotherapy, the cells are returned and they continue on maintenance. Adding the CD38 antibody daratumumab to the three-...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, transplant-ineligible: Most people with newly diagnosed myeloma are too old or frail for a stem cell transplant. Combining a CD38 antibody with lenalidomide and dexamethasone (MAIA) and, for the fitter, with bortezomib as well (IMROZ), now keeps the disease away for around five y...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Nodal marginal zone lymphoma: Nodal marginal zone lymphoma is a slow-growing lymphoma of the lymph nodes that looks like the MALT and splenic types under the microscope but has no organ or spleen involvement to explain it. It lacks a diagnostic marker, so it is diagnosed by excluding th...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Nodal T-follicular helper cell lymphoma, angioimmunoblastic type (angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma): Angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, now called nodal T-follicular helper cell lymphoma of angioimmunoblastic type, is one of the commonest T-cell lymphomas and mostly affects people over 60. It presents with widespread swollen nodes, fever, rash and immune...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Node-positive and metastatic penile cancer: Node-positive penile cancer is squamous cell cancer of the penis that has reached the lymph nodes of the groin or pelvis, and it is where penile cancer becomes life-threatening. Treatment combines removal of the groin nodes with chemotherapy or chemoradioth...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin lymphoma (nodular lymphocyte-predominant B-cell lymphoma): Nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin lymphoma is the rare, slow-growing cousin of classical Hodgkin lymphoma, so different in its CD20-bearing cells that the WHO renamed it a B-cell lymphoma in 2022. Early disease is usually cured with radiotherapy alone...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (all types): Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is not one disease but a family of more than sixty cancers of the lymphocytes, the white blood cells of the immune system. About 95 per cent come from B cells and the rest from T or NK cells; some grow over years and are watched, others...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer: Non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer is a PSA that keeps rising on hormone therapy while scans still show nothing. Three androgen receptor blockers, apalutamide, enzalutamide and darolutamide, each delay metastasis by about two years and leng...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer: Most bladder cancers are found while still confined to the lining. They are scraped out through the urethra and, when higher risk, treated with BCG instilled into the bladder; the challenge is the frequent recurrences and the patients whose tumours stop res...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Non-seminomatous germ cell tumour: Non-seminoma is the faster-growing half of testicular cancer, marked by AFP and hCG in the blood. Surgery cures most early cases, cisplatin chemotherapy cures most of the rest, and surgeons remove what remains after chemotherapy because teratoma does not re...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Non-small-cell lung cancer: Non-small-cell lung cancer is the proving ground for precision medicine: a dozen targetable mutations each with a matched pill, immunotherapy for the rest, and ADCs and bispecifics arriving now. Because most cases are still found late, low-dose CT screening...Open in Atlas onco.cc
NPM1-mutated and KMT2A-rearranged acute myeloid leukaemia: NPM1-mutated and KMT2A-rearranged leukaemias depend on a protein called menin to keep leukaemia genes switched on. Menin inhibitors, revumenib and ziftomenib, are the first drugs to exploit this, and they produce remissions in patients whose leukaemia had c...Open in Atlas onco.cc
NTRK fusion-positive non-small-cell lung cancer: NTRK fusion lung cancer is very rare and is treated with the same TRK-blocking pills approved for any cancer with the fusion: larotrectinib, entrectinib or repotrectinib shrink most tumours, including in the brain, so the point is to test broadly enough to...Open in Atlas onco.cc
NUT carcinoma (midline carcinoma with NUTM1 rearrangement): NUT carcinoma is a fast-growing cancer of the midline of the body driven by a single fused gene, BRD4-NUTM1, that locks cells in an immature state. Chemotherapy and surgery rarely control it for long, but drugs that block the BET proteins the fusion depends...Open in Atlas onco.cc

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Ocular adnexal MALT lymphoma: A slow-growing MALT lymphoma of the tissues around the eye: the conjunctiva, the eye socket, the tear gland or the eyelid. It usually shows itself as a painless salmon-pink patch on the white of the eye or as an eye that has begun to bulge, and it is contro...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Oesophageal and junctional adenocarcinoma: Adenocarcinoma of the lower oesophagus and junction grows out of Barrett's oesophagus, the change in the lining caused by long-standing acid reflux. Chemotherapy or chemoradiation before surgery is standard, and HER2, PD-L1 and claudin 18.2 now guide drugs...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Oesophageal cancer: Oesophageal cancer is really two diseases sharing one organ: squamous cell carcinoma, which dominates in Asia, and adenocarcinoma, which dominates in the West and is treated like gastric cancer. Immunotherapy is now standard, and the bispecific ADC iza-bren...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma: Squamous cell carcinoma of the oesophagus, the world's commonest form, is linked to smoking, alcohol and very hot drinks and sits in the upper and middle gullet. It is treated with chemoradiation, with or without surgery, and immunotherapy has recently join...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Oligodendroglioma, IDH-mutant and 1p/19q-codeleted: Oligodendroglioma is the adult brain tumour most responsive to chemotherapy. It is recognised by an IDH mutation together with loss of parts of chromosomes 1 and 19, and after surgery it is treated with radiotherapy plus the PCV drug combination, or, for sm...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Optic pathway glioma: Optic pathway glioma is a slow-growing childhood brain tumour of the nerves that carry sight, often in children with neurofibromatosis type 1. It rarely kills but can take away vision, so treatment aims to preserve sight: watching if stable, chemotherapy su...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Oral cavity cancer (mouth and tongue): Cancer of the mouth and tongue, a head and neck cancer, is caused mainly by tobacco, alcohol and betel quid and is usually visible or feelable early, yet often diagnosed late. Surgery is the mainstay, with radiotherapy or chemoradiation after operation for...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Oral tongue and floor of mouth cancer: Cancer of the front of the tongue or the floor of the mouth is treated first with surgery, and a Tata Memorial trial settled that the neck lymph nodes should be removed at the same operation even when scans look clear. How deep the tumour has grown is now t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Oropharyngeal cancer (tonsil and base of tongue): Cancer of the tonsils and back of the tongue, a head and neck cancer, now comes mostly from HPV infection rather than smoking, and behaves like a different disease: it responds well to chemoradiation, most patients are cured, and the research question is ho...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Osteosarcoma: Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer, mostly in teenagers. Chemotherapy plus surgery cures about two-thirds when it has not spread; because no new drug has beaten that chemotherapy in a large trial in 30 years, the next gains are being sought in cell...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Ovarian cancer: Usually found late. PARP inhibitors transformed maintenance therapy, and ADCs against folate receptor and CDH6 are arriving for platinum-resistant disease.Open in Atlas onco.cc

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p53-abnormal endometrial cancer, including uterine serous carcinoma: p53-abnormal endometrial cancer is the aggressive class, dominated by serous carcinoma, whose cells have lost the p53 guardian gene and carry scrambled chromosomes. It is the one group that clearly gains from adding chemotherapy to radiotherapy after surger...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Paediatric high-grade glioma (excluding diffuse midline glioma): High-grade gliomas in children look like adult glioblastoma under the microscope but are driven by different genes, so they are now classified separately. Surgery and radiotherapy remain the mainstay and chemotherapy adds little; the real gains are in small...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Paediatric low-grade glioma: Paediatric low-grade gliomas are slow-growing brain tumours driven almost always by a single overactive signal, the MAPK pathway, most often through a BRAF gene change. Because the switch is known, pills that block it (dabrafenib with trametinib, and tovora...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Paget disease of the nipple: Paget disease of the nipple looks like eczema: a scaly, red, itchy or weeping patch on the nipple that creams do not heal. Cancer cells have spread along the milk ducts into the nipple skin, and in most cases a ductal carcinoma in situ or invasive cancer li...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pancreatic acinar cell carcinoma: Pancreatic acinar cell carcinoma is a rare pancreatic cancer that grows from the enzyme-making cells rather than the ducts. It forms large soft masses, can pour lipase into the blood and cause fat lumps under the skin and joint pain, usually lacks the KRAS...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: Almost every pancreatic tumour carries a KRAS mutation, and for the first time drugs against it work: daraxonrasib nearly doubled survival in previously treated disease in 2026. Pancreatic cancer has been the hardest common cancer to treat once advanced; th...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours: Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours arise from the hormone-producing islet cells of the pancreas and behave very differently from ordinary pancreatic cancer, often growing for years. Surgery cures localised tumours; advanced disease is treated in sequence wit...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pancreatoblastoma: Pancreatoblastoma is the pancreatic cancer of young children, a tumour of immature pancreatic cells that behaves quite unlike adult pancreatic cancer. It grows as a large abdominal mass, often raises the blood marker alpha-fetoprotein, and is treated like t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Papillary carcinoma of the gallbladder: Papillary carcinoma is a gallbladder cancer that grows as finger-like fronds into the cavity rather than burrowing into the wall. Cancer Research UK notes it is less likely to spread to the liver and lymph nodes and tends to have a better outlook. Its polyp...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Papillary carcinomas of the breast (encapsulated, solid and invasive papillary): Papillary carcinomas are rare breast cancers, about one in a hundred, that grow as finger-like fronds on stalks, often inside a cyst, mostly in older women. The encapsulated and solid forms behave almost like non-invasive disease and have an excellent outlo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Papillary renal cell carcinoma: Papillary kidney cancer is the second commonest type and does not share the VHL biology of clear cell cancer, so the drugs work differently: the MET-targeting drug cabozantinib beat sunitinib in the first trial run just for this disease, and two hereditary...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Papillary thyroid cancer: Papillary thyroid cancer is the commonest and most curable thyroid cancer. Most people are treated with surgery, some with radioactive iodine afterwards, and many small tumours can simply be watched. Only the rare tumours that stop taking up iodine need tar...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Papillary tumour of the pineal region: Papillary tumour of the pineal region is a rare brain tumour of young adults arising near the pineal gland from cells of the embryonic subcommissural organ. It usually presents with raised pressure from blocked spinal fluid, is removed surgically at a centr...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Parathyroid carcinoma: Parathyroid carcinoma is a cancer of the glands that control blood calcium, seen in a few people per ten million a year; most of its harm comes from dangerously high calcium rather than spread. Removing the tumour intact at the first operation gives the bes...Open in Atlas onco.cc
PD-L1-high gastric cancer: PD-L1-high gastric cancer expresses the immune checkpoint protein PD-L1 on tumour and immune cells, and this is the group in which nivolumab or pembrolizumab added to chemotherapy clearly extends life. The benefit shrinks as the score falls, so regulators n...Open in Atlas onco.cc
PD-L1-high non-small-cell lung cancer without a driver mutation: Lung cancers that carry a lot of PD-L1 and no targetable mutation can be treated with an immunotherapy antibody alone instead of chemotherapy. Pembrolizumab keeps about a third of patients alive at five years, roughly double what chemotherapy achieved, and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
PDGFRA D842V-mutant GIST: PDGFRA D842V GIST is driven by a mutation in the PDGFRA receptor rather than KIT, and it does not respond to imatinib at all. Avapritinib, designed to fit the mutant activation loop, shrinks nearly nine in ten of these tumours and is the standard treatment...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Penile cancer: Penile cancer is a squamous skin-type cancer, about half of it caused by HPV. Caught early it is usually cured with organ-sparing surgery that has replaced amputation, and HPV vaccination and circumcision prevent it; the hard cases are those with lymph-node...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Peripheral T-cell lymphomas (including cutaneous T-cell lymphoma): Peripheral T-cell lymphomas are lymphomas of T cells rather than B cells. They are rarer, more varied and, apart from a few subtypes, harder to treat than B-cell lymphomas; several new drugs help only defined subtypes.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Peritoneal mesothelioma: Peritoneal mesothelioma grows in the lining of the abdomen, causing swelling, pain and fluid. Unlike its pleural cousin it is often treated with major surgery to strip the lining followed by heated chemotherapy washed through the abdomen, which can give lon...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Perivascular epithelioid cell tumour (PEComa): PEComa is a rare tumour, grouped with the sarcomas, of cells that sit around blood vessels and share features of muscle and pigment cells. Most are benign, but malignant ones spread and resist chemotherapy. They usually have lost the TSC1 or TSC2 brake on t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma (PPGL): Pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas are tumours of adrenaline-producing tissue that cause dangerous blood pressure surges. Surgery after careful blood-pressure blockade cures most, genetic testing finds an inherited cause in nearly half, and for the minori...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Philadelphia chromosome-like acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (Ph-like or BCR::ABL1-like ALL): Ph-like leukaemia behaves like Philadelphia chromosome-positive leukaemia, with the same kind of overactive growth signalling, but lacks the BCR::ABL1 gene itself. It is caused by a scattered set of gene fusions and mutations, many of them blockable by exis...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in children (Ph-positive ALL): Philadelphia chromosome-positive leukaemia carries the same faulty BCR::ABL1 gene as chronic myeloid leukaemia. Until 2000 most children with it needed a bone marrow transplant; adding the targeted pill imatinib to chemotherapy, and then dasatinib, means mo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Phyllodes tumour of the breast: A phyllodes tumour is a fast-growing, usually painless breast lump of gland and connective tissue that forms leaf-like fronds. Most are benign, some borderline and a few malignant, behaving like a sarcoma and spreading through the blood. Treatment is surger...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pineoblastoma: Pineoblastoma is a rare, aggressive brain tumour of the pineal gland, mostly in children, made of primitive cells like those of medulloblastoma. It is treated with surgery, radiotherapy to the whole brain and spine in children old enough, and chemotherapy;...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pineocytoma and pineal parenchymal tumour of intermediate differentiation: Pineocytoma and pineal parenchymal tumour of intermediate differentiation are rare brain tumours of the pineal gland in adults, sitting between the benign end and the aggressive pineoblastoma. Pineocytoma is cured by surgery; the intermediate tumour recurs...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pituitary tumours (pituitary neuroendocrine tumours) and pituitary carcinoma: Pituitary tumours are usually benign growths of the hormone gland at the base of the brain that cause trouble by overproducing hormones or pressing on the optic nerves. Prolactin-producing tumours melt away with a tablet, most others are cured by surgery th...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Placental-site trophoblastic tumour and epithelioid trophoblastic tumour: Placental-site and epithelioid trophoblastic tumours are the rare, slow-growing forms of gestational trophoblastic neoplasia, arising from the intermediate trophoblast cells that anchor the placenta rather than the hormone-producing cells behind choriocarci...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Plasma cell leukaemia: Plasma cell leukaemia is myeloma in which the cancerous plasma cells spill into the bloodstream in large numbers. It is the most aggressive plasma cell cancer and is treated urgently with several myeloma drugs at once followed by a stem cell transplant.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Plasmablastic lymphoma: An aggressive lymphoma whose cells have taken on the appearance of plasma cells, so they no longer carry the CD20 marker that most B-cell lymphoma treatments aim at. It most often starts in the mouth or jaw, and about half of people diagnosed with it have HIV.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Platinum-resistant ovarian cancer: Platinum-resistant ovarian cancer grows back within six months of platinum chemotherapy, or during it, and used to be treated with single chemotherapy drugs that shrink a tumour one time in ten. The antibody-drug conjugate mirvetuximab soravtansine, the cor...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer: Platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer is disease that responded to carboplatin and either has not relapsed or relapses more than six months after the last dose. It is treated with further platinum chemotherapy, sometimes repeat surgery, and above all with maint...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pleural mesothelioma: Pleural mesothelioma grows in the lining of the lung after asbestos exposure and causes breathlessness and chest pain from fluid and thickening. It is rarely curable; the first-line choice is nivolumab with ipilimumab or pembrolizumab with chemotherapy, and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pleuropulmonary blastoma (types I, Ir, II and III): Pleuropulmonary blastoma is a rare lung cancer of young children, and the signature tumour of the inherited DICER1 syndrome. It starts as a lung cyst (type I) that can turn into a solid, aggressive tumour (types II and III). Cysts are removed surgically wit...Open in Atlas onco.cc
POLE-ultramutated endometrial cancer: POLE-ultramutated endometrial cancer carries a fault in the proofreading part of a DNA-copying enzyme, so its cells pile up enormous numbers of mutations. It looks aggressive under the microscope yet almost never comes back after surgery, so trials are test...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Polycythaemia vera (PV): Polycythaemia vera is a slow blood cancer in which a single faulty gene, JAK2, makes the bone marrow produce too many red cells. Thick blood causes clots, so treatment thins it (blood removal, aspirin) and, for higher-risk patients, calms the marrow with hy...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Poorly differentiated chordoma (SMARCB1-deficient): Poorly differentiated chordoma is a rare, aggressive form of chordoma of children and young adults, mostly at the base of the skull or in the neck, defined by loss of the SMARCB1 (INI1) protein. It grows faster and spreads more than ordinary chordoma, and t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder (PTLD): After an organ or stem cell transplant, the drugs that stop rejection also stop the immune system from policing Epstein-Barr virus, and infected B cells can grow into a lymphoma. The first move is to ease the immunosuppression; then the antibody rituximab,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Primary CNS lymphoma: Primary CNS lymphoma is a lymphoma confined to the brain, eyes and spinal fluid. Unlike most brain tumours it is chemo-sensitive: high-dose methotrexate-based treatment cures a substantial minority, and consolidation with a stem-cell transplant has replaced...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Primary cutaneous anaplastic large cell lymphoma: A cutaneous T-cell lymphoma that appears as one or a few red-purple nodules on the skin, often ulcerated, which may shrink on their own. Despite cells that look alarming under the microscope it stays in the skin in almost everybody and is treated with surge...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Primary cutaneous follicle centre lymphoma: Primary cutaneous follicle centre lymphoma is a slow-growing lymphoma of germinal-centre B cells that stays in the skin, usually as lumps on the head or trunk. Its outlook is excellent, with about 95 in 100 people alive at five years, and radiotherapy or ex...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Primary cutaneous marginal zone lymphoma: Primary cutaneous marginal zone lymphoma is a very slow-growing lymphoma that appears as pink or purple lumps in the skin, usually on the arms or trunk, and almost never spreads inside the body. WHO-HAEM5 now calls it a lymphoproliferative disorder because...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Primary effusion lymphoma: A rare lymphoma that grows as fluid rather than as a lump: it fills the space around the lungs, the heart or the bowel without forming a mass. It is caused by Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus and arises mostly in people with advanced HIV infection, and it is diag...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Primary large B-cell lymphoma of the testis: A large B-cell lymphoma that starts in a testicle rather than in a lymph node, usually in a man over 60, and shows itself as a painless swelling. It is the commonest cancer of the testicle in older men, and it behaves as one disease with lymphoma of the bra...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Primary mediastinal (thymic) large B-cell lymphoma: Primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma is a fast-growing lymphoma of the thymus behind the breastbone that mostly affects young women. Immunochemotherapy cures about nine in ten, radiotherapy can now be skipped when the end-of-treatment scan is clear, and PD-1...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Primary myelofibrosis: Primary myelofibrosis is a blood cancer in which the marrow scars over, the spleen swells and patients become anaemic and exhausted. JAK inhibitors, ruxolitinib first (COMFORT) and then fedratinib, pacritinib and momelotinib (MOMENTUM), shrink the spleen an...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Prostate cancer: Prostate cancer is the home of theranostics: PSMA PET finds it, PSMA radioligands treat it. Hormonal therapy remains the foundation, with PARP and AKT inhibitors added by genotype.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Pulmonary blastoma (adult): Pulmonary blastoma is a very rare lung cancer of adults that mixes a fetal-looking gland component with a primitive sarcoma-like component, and so belongs with the sarcomatoid lung cancers. It is different from the pleuropulmonary blastoma of young children...Open in Atlas onco.cc

R

Rare cancers of childhood (NCI PDQ umbrella): Some childhood cancers are so rare that no single hospital sees enough to learn from. The NCI groups them together: heart tumours, airway papillomas, cancers of the thyroid, adrenal, nose and throat, melanoma and carcinomas more typical of adults. The answe...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Rectal cancer: Rectal cancer is bowel cancer in the last part of the large intestine, where surgery can mean a permanent stoma. Treatment now usually gives all the chemotherapy and radiotherapy first, and about half of people whose tumour disappears completely can keep th...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Recurrent and metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma: Recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma is nasopharyngeal cancer that has come back after radiotherapy or spread to the bones, liver or lungs. Gemcitabine with cisplatin is the chemotherapy backbone, adding a PD-1 antibody such as toripalimab in JU...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer: Recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer has spread beyond the pelvis or come back where it cannot be cured by surgery or radiotherapy. Pembrolizumab added to chemotherapy and bevacizumab is the first treatment, and the antibody-drug conjugate tisotumab vedo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: When head and neck cancer comes back where it cannot be removed, or spreads elsewhere, it is treated to extend life rather than cure: pembrolizumab, alone or with chemotherapy, is the first choice, cetuximab-based regimens and cheap oral chemotherapy are al...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Relapsed and refractory acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in children: When childhood leukaemia comes back, chemotherapy alone cures fewer than half. Three immune treatments changed this: blinatumomab, which links the child's T-cells to leukaemia cells and beat chemotherapy in two trials; tisagenlecleucel, the first approved C...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Relapsed and refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma: Relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma is Hodgkin lymphoma that comes back or does not respond after first-line chemotherapy. The standard path is salvage chemotherapy, often with brentuximab vedotin or a PD-1 antibody, then high-dose chemotherap...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukaemia: When chronic lymphocytic leukaemia returns, the usual move is to switch drug class: venetoclax-based therapy after a BTK inhibitor, or a BTK inhibitor after venetoclax. Pirtobrutinib (BRUIN) works after the older BTK inhibitors fail, and CAR-T is approved f...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma: Myeloma almost always returns, and each return is harder to treat. Two kinds of immune therapy aimed at the BCMA protein on myeloma cells, CAR-T cells (KarMMa-3, CARTITUDE-4) and off-the-shelf bispecific antibodies (MajesTEC), now give deep remissions after...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Renal cell carcinoma: Kidney cancer is where anti-angiogenic drugs and immunotherapy came together, and where a Nobel-winning oxygen-sensing pathway yielded a drug, belzutifan.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Renal medullary carcinoma (SMARCB1-deficient): Renal medullary carcinoma is a rare kidney cancer of young people with the sickle cell trait, driven by loss of SMARCB1. Platinum chemotherapy and removing the kidney are the main treatments. Most have spread when found; in the 52-patient series median surv...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Resectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: Resectable pancreatic cancer is the minority of pancreatic cancer that the surgeon can remove with clear margins because it has not wrapped around the main arteries or spread. Treatment is an operation, usually a Whipple procedure, followed by six months of...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Resectable stage I to III non-small-cell lung cancer: Lung cancer caught before it has spread is treated with surgery, now often keyhole or robotic and sometimes removing only part of a lobe. Immunotherapy given before and after the operation, or a targeted pill afterwards for EGFR or ALK tumours, cuts the cha...Open in Atlas onco.cc
RET fusion-positive non-small-cell lung cancer: RET fusion lung cancer is a rare adenocarcinoma driven by a fused RET gene. The selective pill selpercatinib shrinks most tumours and more than doubles the time to progression compared with chemotherapy and immunotherapy, and pralsetinib is a second option.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Retinoblastoma: An eye cancer of infants caused by loss of the RB1 gene, the first tumour-suppressor gene ever found. In rich countries almost every child survives and most eyes are saved by chemotherapy delivered through the eye's artery; in low-income countries, where mo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Retroperitoneal germ cell tumour: A retroperitoneal germ cell tumour is a germ cell tumour found in the back of the abdomen with no obvious tumour in the testis. Many turn out to be spread from a tiny testicular tumour that has scarred over, so the testes are examined closely; treatment and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Retroperitoneal sarcoma: Retroperitoneal sarcomas grow silently at the back of the abdomen until they are the size of a melon. The treatment is one carefully planned operation in a sarcoma centre that removes the tumour with the neighbouring organs it touches. The STRASS trial show...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Rhabdomyosarcoma: A childhood soft-tissue sarcoma, a cancer of muscle-like cells found anywhere from the eye socket to the bladder. Most children are cured with chemotherapy, surgery and radiation, and a fusion gene (PAX-FOXO1) now decides how intensively to treat.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Richter transformation of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia: Richter transformation is the sudden change of slow chronic lymphocytic leukaemia into a fast-growing lymphoma, usually of the diffuse large B-cell type. It is treated with lymphoma chemotherapy followed by a donor transplant where possible, and newer drugs...Open in Atlas onco.cc
ROS1-positive non-small-cell lung cancer: ROS1-positive lung cancer is a rare fusion-driven adenocarcinoma treated with a pill. Crizotinib was the first, and the newer drugs repotrectinib and taletrectinib control the disease for about three years, reach the brain and work against the resistance mu...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Rosai-Dorfman-Destombes disease: Rosai-Dorfman disease is a rare histiocytosis in which large immune cells called histiocytes fill the neck lymph nodes or grow in the skin, bones, nose, brain coverings or kidneys. Many cases fade without treatment, so it is watched unless it threatens an o...Open in Atlas onco.cc

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Salivary duct carcinoma: Salivary duct carcinoma is an aggressive cancer of the parotid gland that behaves like a high-grade breast cancer and carries the same switches: most tumours run on the androgen receptor and about a third on HER2, so hormone blockers borrowed from prostate...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Salivary gland cancers: Salivary gland cancers are a family of over 20 rare cancers, each with its own behaviour and often its own gene fusion. Surgery and radiation treat most; drug therapy is now chosen by the specific subtype, from anti-HER2 or anti-androgen drugs to NTRK inhib...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Sarcomas (soft tissue, bone, GIST): Sarcomas are dozens of rare cancers of bone and connective tissue. GIST was the first solid tumour cured-in-practice by a targeted pill; synovial sarcoma got the first TCR-T therapy.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Sarcomatoid carcinoma of the lung: Sarcomatoid carcinoma is a rare, aggressive form of lung cancer in which part or all of the tumour looks like a sarcoma, with spindle-shaped or giant cells. It is treated like other non-small-cell lung cancers, but is worth testing for a MET gene fault, whi...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Secondary and therapy-related acute myeloid leukaemia: Secondary acute myeloid leukaemia grows out of an earlier marrow disorder or follows chemotherapy or radiotherapy for another cancer. It resists standard treatment more than other leukaemias; a liposomal form of the two classic chemotherapy drugs, CPX-351,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Secretory carcinoma of the breast: Secretory carcinoma is a very rare, slow-growing breast cancer first described in children, whose cells make milk-like secretions. It is usually triple-negative but almost always carries the ETV6-NTRK3 gene fusion, so the rare patient whose tumour spreads c...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Seminoma: Seminoma is the slower, more radiosensitive half of testicular cancer. After removal of the testicle most men need no further treatment and are simply monitored; those who relapse or present with spread are cured with a short course of chemotherapy.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Serrated adenocarcinoma of the colon and rectum: Serrated adenocarcinoma is a form of bowel cancer that grows out of sessile serrated polyps rather than ordinary adenomas, keeping their saw-tooth pattern. Most cases carry a KRAS or BRAF mutation and the BRAF-mutant ones are often mismatch-repair deficient...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Sertoli cell tumour of the testis: Sertoli cell tumour is a rare testicular tumour arising from the cells that support sperm production. Most are benign and cured by removing the testis. About one in ten spread, and no systemic treatment has been shown to work for those, so care is planned c...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Sezary syndrome: Sezary syndrome is the leukaemic form of skin lymphoma: the whole skin turns red and scaly, the lymph nodes swell, and malignant T cells circulate in the blood. It is treated to control rather than cure, with photopheresis, the antibody mogamulizumab, and d...Open in Atlas onco.cc
SHH-activated medulloblastoma: SHH-activated medulloblastoma is driven by the sonic hedgehog growth pathway, the signal that normally tells the developing cerebellum to grow. In infants it is often cured with chemotherapy alone and no radiotherapy; in adults it responds for a time to hed...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Signet ring cell carcinoma of the colon and rectum: Signet ring cell carcinoma is a rare form of bowel cancer, about one in a hundred, in which the cells fill with mucus that pushes the nucleus aside, like a ring. It occurs in younger people, favours the right colon, is usually found at an advanced stage and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Single-system Langerhans cell histiocytosis (bone, skin or one other organ): Single-system Langerhans cell histiocytosis is the milder form of this rare histiocytosis, in which the abnormal immune cells affect only one organ, usually a bone or the skin, in a child or young adult. Single bone lesions often heal after biopsy or curett...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma (SNUC) and SWI/SNF-deficient sinonasal carcinoma: Sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma is a rare, fast-growing cancer of the nasal cavity and sinuses made of primitive cells with no clear line of differentiation, most carrying an IDH2 mutation. It presents as a large mass pressing on the eye or brain and i...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Skin cancer (all types): Skin cancer covers the very common and rarely dangerous basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas, the less common but more serious melanoma, and rarer tumours such as Merkel cell carcinoma and Kaposi sarcoma. Almost all of it is caused by ultraviolet light a...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma of the cervix: Small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma of the cervix is a rare, aggressive cervical cancer that behaves like small cell lung cancer, spreading early to nodes and distant organs even when the tumour is small. Fewer than four in ten women with early disease are...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Small intestinal neuroendocrine tumours: Small intestinal neuroendocrine tumours are slow-growing hormone-producing tumours of the ileum and jejunum, often found only after they have spread to lymph nodes and the liver. Monthly somatostatin analogue injections control symptoms and growth, lutetium...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Small intestine cancer (small bowel adenocarcinoma): Cancers of the small intestine are rare and often found late because the small bowel is hard to see and symptoms are vague. Surgery cures early disease, chemotherapy borrowed from bowel cancer helps after surgery and in advanced disease, and a large minorit...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Small-cell lung cancer: A fast-growing lung cancer. About a third of cases are confined to one side of the chest and are treated to cure with chemotherapy and radiotherapy together; the rest respond to chemotherapy and relapse quickly. After 30 years without progress, durvalumab c...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Smouldering multiple myeloma: Smouldering myeloma is myeloma that has not yet damaged bones, kidneys or blood counts. Most people are watched, but those at high risk of progressing can now be treated: the AQUILA trial showed daratumumab alone delays active myeloma, and it was approved f...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Soft tissue sarcoma of the extremity (localised and advanced): Most soft tissue sarcomas arise in an arm or leg. Limb-saving surgery with radiotherapy cures most localised tumours and is as safe as amputation. For spread disease doxorubicin is the backbone: adding ifosfamide shrinks more tumours without lengthening lif...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Solid pseudopapillary neoplasm of the pancreas: Solid pseudopapillary neoplasm is a rare, slow-growing pancreatic tumour of young women that is classed as a low-grade cancer. It is driven by a fault in the beta-catenin gene rather than the KRAS mutation of ordinary pancreatic cancer, is often found by ch...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Somatostatinoma: Somatostatinoma is one of the rarest neuroendocrine tumours, arising in the pancreas or the duodenum and secreting somatostatin, a hormone that switches off digestion, which can cause mild diabetes, gallstones and fatty diarrhoea. Duodenal cases are often l...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Somatotroph pituitary neuroendocrine tumour (acromegaly): A somatotroph tumour is a pituitary tumour that makes too much growth hormone, causing acromegaly in adults (enlarging hands, feet and face, diabetes, heart and joint disease) or gigantism in children. Surgery through the nose comes first; if hormone levels...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Spermatocytic tumour of the testis: Spermatocytic tumour, once called spermatocytic seminoma, is a rare testicular germ cell tumour of older men that arises from maturing sperm precursors rather than from the fetal germ cells behind ordinary testicular cancer. It almost never spreads, so remo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Spinal cord tumours (intramedullary and intradural): Tumours inside or around the spinal cord are rare and usually slow growing, but they press on the cord and threaten walking and bladder control. Most are removed by a surgeon watching nerve signals during the operation; radiotherapy is used when a tumour ca...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Splenic B-cell lymphoma/leukaemia with prominent nucleoli (formerly B-cell prolymphocytic leukaemia and hairy cell leukaemia variant): Splenic B-cell lymphoma/leukaemia with prominent nucleoli is the new WHO name for a rare group of B-cell leukaemias of older adults with a big spleen, large cells with obvious nucleoli and a poor response to standard treatment; it absorbs the old diagnoses...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Splenic marginal zone lymphoma: Splenic marginal zone lymphoma is a slow-growing lymphoma that grows in the spleen and bone marrow, causing a very large spleen and a raised lymphocyte count but rarely swollen lymph nodes. Many people need no treatment for years; when they do, rituximab ha...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Squamous cell carcinoma of the lung: Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common type of lung cancer and the one most tightly linked to smoking; it starts in the flat cells lining the large central airways. Unlike adenocarcinoma it rarely carries a mutation a tablet can target, so treatm...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Squamous cell carcinoma of the urethra: Squamous cell carcinoma of the urethra is the type of urethral cancer that grows in the outer part of the urethra, where the lining is skin-like; in some cases HPV is involved. It is treated like anal or vulval cancer of the same cell type, with chemotherap...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Stage IIB and IIC melanoma: Stage IIB and IIC melanomas are thick or ulcerated skin melanomas that have not reached the lymph nodes but still carry a real risk of coming back. A year of pembrolizumab or nivolumab after surgery lowers that risk, though most people in this group would h...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Stage III melanoma (after surgery): Stage III melanoma has spread to nearby lymph nodes but not further, and after surgery a year of immunotherapy, or of targeted pills if the cancer has a BRAF mutation, roughly halves the chance of it coming back. The newest trials show that giving immunothe...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Standard-risk B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in children: Standard-risk acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is the commonest and most curable childhood cancer: a child aged one to nine with a modest white cell count and favourable genetics. Two to three years of chemotherapy cures about nine in ten, and adding the immun...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Succinate dehydrogenase-deficient renal cell carcinoma: Succinate dehydrogenase-deficient renal cell carcinoma is a very rare kidney cancer of younger adults who carry a faulty SDH gene, the same fault that causes hereditary paraganglioma and some stomach stromal tumours. Most are low grade and cured by surgery,...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Synovial sarcoma: Synovial sarcoma is a young person's sarcoma driven by a single fusion gene, SS18-SSX, that scrambles how genes are switched on. It is treated with surgery, radiotherapy and ifosfamide-based chemotherapy, and in 2024 it became the first solid tumour with an...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Systemic mastocytosis: Systemic mastocytosis is a clonal disease of mast cells, the immune cells that release histamine; almost every case is driven by a single mutation in the KIT gene. Precise KIT-blocking pills now shrink the mast cell burden, ease symptoms and, in the aggress...Open in Atlas onco.cc

T

T-cell large granular lymphocytic leukaemia: T-cell large granular lymphocytic leukaemia is a slow, usually non-fatal leukaemia in which a clone of cytotoxic T cells builds up in the blood and marrow and turns the immune system against the body, causing low neutrophil counts, anaemia and often rheumat...Open in Atlas onco.cc
T-cell prolymphocytic leukaemia: T-cell prolymphocytic leukaemia is a rare, aggressive leukaemia of mature T cells in older adults, with a very high white cell count, a big spleen and liver, swollen nodes and sometimes skin changes. The antibody alemtuzumab given into a vein clears it in m...Open in Atlas onco.cc
T-cell/histiocyte-rich large B-cell lymphoma: A lymphoma in which the cancer cells are a tiny minority of what the pathologist sees: scattered large B cells in a dense crowd of normal T cells and macrophages. It is a form of large B-cell lymphoma, it usually presents with disease in the liver, spleen o...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Tenosynovial giant cell tumour (TGCT): TGCT is a benign but destructive tumour of the joint lining, classed with soft-tissue sarcomas, in which a few cells carrying a CSF1 gene fusion recruit a crowd of normal immune cells that eat away at the joint. Surgery cures most localised cases, and for d...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Testicular germ cell tumours: Testicular germ cell tumours are the most curable adult solid cancer: cisplatin-based chemotherapy cures the large majority even when the disease has spread to distant sites. Today's research is about giving less treatment to the majority who are cured, res...Open in Atlas onco.cc
TFE3-rearranged (translocation) renal cell carcinoma: Translocation renal cell carcinoma is a rare kidney cancer, more often seen in children and young adults, driven by a rearrangement of the TFE3 gene (or its relative TFEB). It can look like clear cell or papillary kidney cancer under the microscope, so it i...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Thymic carcinoma: Thymic carcinoma is the aggressive kind of thymic epithelial tumour, a cancer of the thymus that behaves like carcinoma elsewhere and has often spread when found. Surgery is attempted when possible, carboplatin with paclitaxel is the usual chemotherapy, and...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Thymoma (WHO types A, AB, B1, B2 and B3): Thymoma is the slower-growing kind of thymic epithelial tumour, an indolent cancer of the thymus gland behind the breastbone that often announces itself through the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis. Complete surgical removal cures most patients, radioth...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Thymoma and thymic carcinoma: Thymoma and thymic carcinoma are rare tumours of the thymus gland in the chest. Thymomas grow slowly, often cause autoimmune diseases such as myasthenia gravis, and are usually cured by surgery; thymic carcinomas behave like other aggressive cancers and hav...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Thyroid cancer: Thyroid cancer is usually curable with surgery and radioactive iodine, the original theranostic. Rare aggressive forms respond to RET and BRAF inhibitors.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Thyrotroph pituitary neuroendocrine tumour (TSH-secreting): A thyrotroph tumour is a very rare pituitary tumour that secretes TSH, driving the thyroid to overactivity with a TSH level that is not suppressed. It is often mistaken for common hyperthyroidism and wrongly treated by destroying the thyroid, which makes th...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC): A breast cancer that lacks the three receptors (oestrogen, progesterone, HER2) that other breast cancers can be treated through. It was the hardest subtype for decades; since 2020 immunotherapy and ADCs have changed that.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Tubular carcinoma of the breast: Tubular carcinoma is a rare, slow-growing type of breast cancer made of small, well-formed tubes, usually found small on a screening mammogram. Its outlook is excellent, better even than other grade 1 breast cancers, and it is treated with surgery, radiothe...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Type A and type AB thymoma: Type A and type AB thymoma are the indolent end of thymoma, tumours of the thymus gland made of spindle-shaped epithelial cells (type A) or mixed with lymphocyte-rich areas (type AB), mostly in older adults and driven by a GTF2I mutation. Nine in ten are fo...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Type B1 and type B2 thymoma: Type B1 and type B2 thymoma are thymus gland tumours in which the epithelial tumour cells are mixed with many immature lymphocytes, resembling the normal thymic cortex; B2 is the commonest thymoma of all. They are strongly linked to myasthenia gravis, are u...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Type B3 thymoma: Type B3 thymoma is the most aggressive thymoma, a thymus gland tumour made mostly of epithelial cells with few lymphocytes, sitting at the border with thymic carcinoma. More than a third have already grown into the chest structures when found, so it is trea...Open in Atlas onco.cc

U

Undifferentiated carcinoma of the pancreas with osteoclast-like giant cells: Undifferentiated carcinoma with osteoclast-like giant cells is a rare form of pancreatic cancer studded with large bone-eating-type cells that are not themselves cancerous. It grows as a big, well-circumscribed mass, often within a cyst, spreads to nerves a...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (UPS): Undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma is the diagnosis for a high-grade soft tissue sarcoma whose cells show no recognisable line of differentiation. It is treated with surgery and radiotherapy, with doxorubicin-based chemotherapy for high-risk or spread dis...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Unresectable stage III non-small-cell lung cancer: Stage III lung cancer that cannot be removed is treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy together, aiming at cure. A year of the immunotherapy antibody durvalumab afterwards raised five-year survival from a third to over 40 percent, and for EGFR-mutated t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Urethral cancer: Urethral cancer grows in the tube that carries urine out of the body, with fewer than one case per million people a year. With no randomised trials, it is treated by borrowing from bladder, anal or vulvar cancer depending on cell type and location; chemothe...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Urothelial carcinoma of the urethra: Urothelial carcinoma of the urethra is the type of urethral cancer that grows from the same lining as bladder cancer, usually in the part of the urethra nearest the bladder or running through the prostate. It is treated by borrowing from bladder cancer: sur...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Uterine carcinosarcoma: Uterine carcinosarcoma is a two-faced cancer with a carcinoma part and a sarcoma-like part that both come from the same faulty epithelial cell. It is treated as a high-grade endometrial cancer, with surgery, carboplatin-paclitaxel and often radiotherapy, an...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Uterine sarcoma: Uterine sarcomas are rare cancers of the muscle and supporting tissue of the womb, distinct from the far commoner endometrial cancer. Removing the uterus intact is the main treatment and is followed by observation for stage I disease; low-grade stromal sarc...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Uveal melanoma: A melanoma inside the eye that is biologically unrelated to skin melanoma: different mutations, no response to standard immunotherapy, and a tendency to spread to the liver years later. Tebentafusp is the first drug ever to extend survival in the metastatic...Open in Atlas onco.cc

V

Vaginal adenocarcinoma (including DES-associated clear cell adenocarcinoma): Vaginal adenocarcinoma is a rare glandular form of vaginal cancer, best known through the clear cell type that struck young women whose mothers took the hormone DES in pregnancy. Unlike the common squamous form it is not caused by HPV, it is treated with su...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Vaginal cancer: Primary vaginal cancer is rare and mostly caused by HPV, the virus behind cervical cancer. It is treated like cervical cancer, with weekly cisplatin alongside external and internal radiotherapy, which controls most tumours while preserving the organ; HPV va...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Vaginal melanoma: Vaginal melanoma is a very rare, aggressive melanoma of the vaginal lining in older women, usually found late because it is hidden, with the worst outlook of any melanoma site. It is treated with surgery where the tumour can be removed and radiotherapy wher...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Vaginal squamous cell carcinoma (HPV-associated): Vaginal squamous cell carcinoma is the commonest form of vaginal cancer, caused by the same HPV infection as cervical cancer and often following earlier cervical disease. It is treated much as cervical cancer is, with radiotherapy, brachytherapy and cisplat...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Vascular tumours (angiosarcoma, epithelioid haemangioendothelioma, kaposiform haemangioendothelioma): Vascular tumours range from angiosarcoma, an aggressive cancer of blood vessel lining cells, to the slow-growing EHE and the infant tumour KHE. Angiosarcoma responds to paclitaxel and, in the sun-damaged scalp form, to immunotherapy; EHE and KHE depend on g...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Vestibular schwannoma (acoustic neuroma): A vestibular schwannoma is a benign brain tumour, a growth on the balance and hearing nerve, deep in the skull. It is rarely dangerous, so many are simply watched with scans; growing tumours are treated with either an operation or a single precisely focused...Open in Atlas onco.cc
VIPoma: VIPoma is a very rare pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour that secretes vasoactive intestinal peptide, causing litres of watery diarrhoea a day with dangerous loss of potassium. Most have spread to the liver by diagnosis. Fluid replacement and somatostatin ana...Open in Atlas onco.cc
Vulvar cancer: An uncommon cancer of the external genitalia with two distinct causes: HPV infection in younger women and chronic skin inflammation in older women. Surgery is the mainstay, and sentinel-node biopsy has made it far less mutilating.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Vulvar melanoma: Vulvar melanoma is the second most common vulvar cancer, a melanoma of the mucosal skin of the vulva in older women that is usually found late and has shorter survival than skin melanoma. It is removed with a margin, staged like skin melanoma by thickness,...Open in Atlas onco.cc

W

Waldenström macroglobulinaemia: A slow lymphoma that makes an abnormal IgM antibody, causing thick blood, anaemia and nerve damage. Nearly all cases share one mutation (MYD88 L265P), and BTK inhibitors control it for years.Open in Atlas onco.cc
Wilms tumour (nephroblastoma): Wilms tumour is a kidney cancer of young children and one of paediatric oncology's success stories: surgery plus a few months of chemotherapy cures about nine in ten. Today's trials aim to give the lowest-risk children almost no chemotherapy while finding t...Open in Atlas onco.cc
WNT-activated medulloblastoma: WNT-activated medulloblastoma is the rarest and most curable of the four molecular groups of medulloblastoma, a brain tumour of the cerebellum. It is driven by a mutation in the beta-catenin gene that switches the WNT growth pathway on. Almost every child i...Open in Atlas onco.cc

Y

Yolk sac tumour of the testis, postpubertal type: Yolk sac tumour is a germ cell tumour whose cells copy the yolk sac of an early embryo and make the protein alpha-fetoprotein, which is measured in the blood to track it. In adults it almost always occurs mixed with other non-seminoma components and is cure...Open in Atlas onco.cc