evidence: The study, which appears Sept. 29 in Cell, provides a scientific framework to develop tests that delineate specific fungal species in tumors that are relevant for prediction of cancer progression and therapy. The results also point to the possibility of using antifungal treatments to augment conventional cancer treatments in some cases. "These findings open up a lot of exciting research directions, from the development of diagnostics and treatments to studies of the detailed biological mechanisms of fungal relationships to cancers," said senior author Iliyan Iliev, associate professor of immunology in medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and a member of the Jill Roberts Institute for Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Weill Cornell Medicine. [...] Conceivably, tumor-associated fungi could also be targets for antifungal therapies to improve overall treatment outcomes. This prospect, however, hangs on an unresolved question: Do tumor-resident fungi help drive malignancy, perhaps by stoking inflammation, as some bacteria are known to do? Or are fungi associated with some tumors only because the tumors, as they become more advanced, provide an increasingly permissive environment for fungal growth?