OpenOnco / News
What changed. What it means.
Fresh project updates and source-cited explainers, written for people who want to see the evidence and the limits.
57 posts · Every post has English and Ukrainian text; selected posts have nine more full translations.
TuMatch gets a study green light. What does it establish?
Vivan says a prospective study will enroll at least 10 people with colorectal cancer. Permission to study a tool is not proof of patient benefit.
Read the storyJust shipped
Biodesix plans a CT-and-blood lung test. What exists today?
A new lung-nodule test is in development, with first data promised for December. We compare its proposed workflow with OpenOnco’s current role.
Read the storySophont predicts gene activity from slides. What is established?
Holon-S1 predicts spatial signals from pathology images; OpenOnco reviews cited rules. Neither has shown better patient outcomes from this comparison.
Read the storyWorth understanding
Source-cited background, not treatment advice.
Biodesix plans a CT-and-blood lung test. What exists today?
A new lung-nodule test is in development, with first data promised for December. We compare its proposed workflow with OpenOnco’s current role.
Read the storySophont predicts gene activity from slides. What is established?
Holon-S1 predicts spatial signals from pathology images; OpenOnco reviews cited rules. Neither has shown better patient outcomes from this comparison.
Read the storyHologic plans to buy Reveal Genomics. What does HER2DX add?
The deal is not closed. A 27-gene tissue test and OpenOnco's public rules answer different questions; changed decisions are not proof of better outcomes.
Read the storyBrowse the archive 53
Earlier releases and explainers, newest first
Pause a Plan Builder example without losing the form
Unfinished inputs can return in the same browser. The saved form is a convenience, not a clinical record or a saved treatment plan.
Read the storyAignostics launches HETA Clinical. Where does OpenOnco fit?
Image analysis and cited pathway review solve different problems. The launch is real; claims of fewer failed tests still need clinical evidence.
Read the storyTumorSight Risk is FDA-cleared. What does its score mean?
The MRI-based risk tool has regulatory clearance and retrospective validation. It answers a different question from OpenOnco's open rules; neither proves better treatment outcomes.
Read the storyCheck input before server work
Clinical request fields are now validated before quota accounting and engine processing.
Read the storyReview status belongs in the report
Patient reports began displaying the current content-review status beside findings.
Read the storyKeyboard focus crosses the report
Keyboard navigation now wraps at the report iframe boundaries.
Read the storyWhere does a submitted question go?
All eleven language editions gained clearer browser, server and model-provider data-flow wording.
Read the storyA better question starts before the text box
The Tumor Board page now explains what the draft can do, who will review it, and where the information goes before anyone types a case.
Read the storyWhen a translation drops a safety clause, show the source
Recent checks found omitted warnings and altered dosing language in clinical translation drafts. Affected passages now display the complete English source with a visible language label while review remains pending.
Read the storySources closer to the patient report
Patient report output began exposing source links and auditing the scope of localization.
Read the storyA shorter menu for small screens
The mobile header was simplified and navigation links were aligned.
Read the storyShow missing data before options
Patient-facing drafts now surface data gaps before listing treatment options.
Read the storyExport the language you actually see
Report export now follows the displayed language and discloses any patient-text fallback.
Read the storyFrom a disease name to the record behind it
OpenOnco now has 103 disease landing pages in English and Ukrainian. Wiki discovery also connects indications and regimens across six interface languages, with provenance and review limits visible.
Read the storyThe public site opened in more languages
The public interface expanded to six languages, including new Handbook drafts.
Read the storyFind the indication behind a regimen
Bilingual discovery pages made indication and regimen records easier to browse.
Read the storyPrevision raised $5.4m. What does open source offer?
The lab assay and OpenOnco answer different questions. Open code makes rules inspectable; funding alone says nothing about patient outcomes.
Read the storyA multicancer blood test missed its main screening goal
In a randomized trial of 142,250 people, adding the Galleri test did not reduce the combined rate of stage III–IV cancers across 12 prespecified types.
Read the storyWhy TMB ≥10 mutations/Mb is not a universal biological line
The FDA’s tumour-agnostic TMB-high indication for pembrolizumab used a particular assay and counting rule. The same numeric threshold cannot simply be copied to every sequencing panel or every tumour type.
Read the storyHow a “common essential” gene can still hide a selective weakness
MTAP deletion can make cancer cells more sensitive to PRMT5 inhibition, even though PRMT5 is broadly essential to proliferating cells. The story is a lesson in how the kind of genetic screen used can conceal a biomarker signal.
Read the storyThe same cancer cell line can become different experiments
Laboratory versions of the widely used MCF7 breast-cancer cell line differed genetically and in drug response. The finding is a reminder that a cell-line name is not a complete experimental description.
Read the storyDRUP: a basket trial does not make all biomarkers equally strong
Cohorts in the Dutch DRUP programme produced sharply different outcomes. The contrast is not evidence that actionability tiers do not matter; its own later analysis argues that strong biological and prior clinical evidence tracked with the better-performing targets.
Read the storyPrecision oncology: what the famous reality checks actually found
SHIVA and NCI-MATCH did not show that all biomarker-matched therapy fails. They showed how steep the route from sequencing to treatment can be and how weak-evidence matches in late-line disease often underdeliver.
Read the storyStatistically significant is not automatically worthwhile
ESMO-MCBS scores the size of benefit in studies that are already statistically positive. Its purpose is to distinguish a small, formal effect from one likely to matter to patients.
Read the storyWhat ESMO grades D and E actually say
ESMO’s D and E grades mean evidence against efficacy or evidence of an adverse outcome. They do not mean merely that evidence is missing; that situation belongs to grade C.
Read the storyWhy a guideline can list a regimen before a phase 3 trial reports
In a study of new multiple-myeloma regimens, NCCN listing often preceded reported phase 3 data. That is a description of one guideline history, not evidence that guidelines routinely run ahead of regulators or that all early listings are equally supported.
Read the storyWho can ask NCCN to change a guideline?
NCCN accepts guideline-change submissions from clinicians, patient advocates, organisations, payers and industry. The process has a common form and a fixed timetable, but it is not a guarantee that every request reaches a vote.
Read the storyCancers that pass between animals
A few animal cancers persist as clonal lineages that can move from one host to another. The oldest known example is a dog cancer likely thousands — not eleven thousand — years old. This is not a naturally occurring human cancer.
Read the storyCan treatment-tolerant cancer cells become temporarily more mutable?
In colorectal-cancer models, a small population of cells that persists during targeted treatment temporarily changed DNA-repair programmes. It is an intriguing mechanism, but its contribution to resistance in patients is still not settled.
Read the storyWhen a chromosome breaks apart in one event
Chromothripsis is a well-established pattern of catastrophic chromosome rearrangement. “Genome chaos” is a broader, less standard interpretation of such crises — not a synonym and not a settled survival strategy.
Read the storyIs cancer returning to a unicellular past?
Some tumours express older evolutionary gene programmes more strongly and multicellular programmes less strongly. That observation is real; the proposed “atavism” explanation remains a contested research hypothesis.
Read the storyNormal skin is already full of "cancer" mutations
Sequencing physiologically normal eyelid skin found driver mutations — the same ones found in tumours — in roughly a quarter of cells, at about 140 per square centimetre. The skin was working fine. A driver mutation alone does not make cancer.
Read the storyWhat NCCN category 2A actually means
2A is widely read as "weak evidence, weak recommendation." It is not. The panel agreement behind 2A is the same as behind category 1 — and 2A is what you get by default when no category is printed at all.
Read the storyThis section is new, and it is open for comment
Release notes and governance decisions now have a home on the site instead of living only in commit messages. Every post takes comments — with a few rules that a cancer-information site genuinely needs.
Read the storyA smaller doorway into the Wiki
A site change reduced the main Wiki page from about 2 MB to about 18 KB and deferred font loading.
Read the storyMonitoring speaks more Ukrainian
Ukrainian report output gained monitoring-phase labels and checkpoint wording.
Read the storyOne example, two reading levels
Curated examples gained patient-view companions alongside their professional versions.
Read the storyNine gaps received draft pathways
Nine adult disease areas with little first-line coverage received authored draft pathways.
Read the storyA handbook for finding your way
The first Handbook release added five chapters, search, a quiz and a reviewer workflow.
Read the storyFind an example before filling a form
A searchable picker made verified treatment examples easier to locate in the Plan Builder.
Read the storySome prose conditions became checkable
Existing algorithm conditions were connected to structured findings and red flags where matching fields existed.
Read the storyDecision-tree routing defects fixed, validator hardened
Auditing every treatment algorithm through the engine walker — rather than the loader — surfaced routing defects that were silently dropping selected indications from rendered plans.
Read the storyTwo doors — and why patients get a different one
The homepage now routes clinicians and patients to different places. Patients get help understanding a plan and preparing questions, not treatment recommendations — a line that has to hold for both safety and regulatory reasons.
Read the storyAn AI assistant can now call the engine instead of guessing
OpenOnco ships an MCP server, so an assistant answering an oncology question can route through the rule engine and return cited output rather than improvising a regimen.
Read the storyThe home page explains the work
A home-page rewrite put the intended workflow and its limits ahead of a feature list.
Read the storyThe disease count became a doorway
The disease number on the home page now opens the disease directory instead of ending the journey.
Read the storyFive views of what OpenOnco can do
The capabilities page gained five compact views of the platform, its pipeline and its limits.
Read the storyPrevention plans, for people who do not have cancer yet
The charter was amended to cover people at elevated risk but without a diagnosis. The engine now produces a Prevention Plan alongside the Treatment Plan, and the first pilots are live on the site.
Read the story85% of our decision-tree conditions were unreadable to the engine
An audit of every treatment algorithm found that most branching conditions were written as English prose the engine cannot evaluate — and that 30% of algorithms therefore fell through to their default on every patient.
Read the storyWhat landed in the knowledge base, 30 April to 11 May
A digest of one busy fortnight: haematology, thoracic and breast regimen waves, rare-tumour red flags, CIViC actionability backfill, and a batch of routing fixes.
Read the storyBiomarker actionability moves from OncoKB to CIViC
A licence audit found OncoKB's terms incompatible with running OpenOnco as a free public resource. Biomarker actionability now builds on CIViC, which is CC0.
Read the storyWhy an LLM never picks the treatment
The project started out asking a language model to rank treatments. That approach is now archived, and the rule that replaced it shapes everything else: recommendations come from a versioned knowledge base, not a model.
Read the storyPractising oncologists reviewed the engine's plans for the first time
The engine produced treatment plans for a real patient, and the oncologists who read them judged them strong. One case does not validate a system — but it is the first signal from outside the project's own scoring.
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