It’s almost hard to remember, but just a few years ago, a lot of very smart people thought that science was in terminal decline. Respected researchers were writing papers with titles like “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?”, “Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time”, and “Slowed canonical progress in large fields of […]
FOX News Media teamed up with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) Thursday for a special panel highlighting advances in breast cancer research and treatment while urging women to take an active role in their healthcare.
The event, held at Fox News headquarters in New York City during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, featured Kat Timpf, the "Gutfeld!" co-host and breast cancer survivor, alongside Dr. Priya Malhotra, director of research impact at BCRF.
Speaking with Fox News Digital after the panel, Timpf emphasized that while breast cancer awareness is widespread, misconceptions about the disease persist and may discourage people from asking important questions about their health.
"There is also so much that people don’t know. It can happen at any age, without genetic markers. I would know that," Timpf told Fox News Digital. "Talking about it is always helpful because it removes a lot of the stigma, and it makes you feel like you can ask these questions to your doctor."
Timpf was diagnosed with Stage 0 ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) in February 2025, just 15 hours before giving birth to her first child. She announced the news on social media days later, writing what she called an "unconventional birth announcement."
"Last week, I welcomed my first child into the world. About fifteen hours before I went into labor, I was diagnosed with breast cancer," Timpf wrote on X at the time.
"Now, before you worry, my doctor says it’s stage 0 and is confident that it almost certainly hasn’t spread. Or, as I’ve explained to the few people I’ve managed to tell about it so far: Don’t freak out. It’s just, like, a LITTLE bit of cancer."
Throughout her breast cancer experience, Timpf leaned on her signature humor, a coping mechanism she said helped her through some of the most difficult moments of her diagnosis and recovery.
"Humor is how I've gotten through every hard thing that's ever happened to me," Timpf said. "I was making jokes the day I was diagnosed about getting huge replacement [implants] and stuff like that. That's just how I do things because I feel like when you say that you can't joke about a subject, you're giving it even more power over you than it already has.
"For me, making jokes about a subject is a way to instead feel power over the things that are threatening to take you down."
Timpf's central message to women was to take an active role in their healthcare, stay on top of recommended screenings and speak up when something doesn't feel right.
"Your own health is up to you. So, you have to make sure you pay attention and ask your doctor questions," Timpf said. "Don't think it can't happen to you because I thought that, and I was wrong."
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the U.S. and worldwide, with approximately one in eight U.S. women expected to develop invasive breast cancer during their lifetime, according to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
While breast cancer has historically been more commonly diagnosed in older women, rates are rising among younger women, including those under 40, before routine mammograms are generally recommended for women at average risk.
Dr. Malhotra emphasized that while breast cancer diagnoses in younger women account for a relatively small share of cases, the impact is profound.
"Incidence of breast cancer is rising in younger women," Dr. Malhotra told Fox News Digital.
"Maybe 10% of breast cancers are in younger women," she added. "But still, if you're one of the 10%, it's crushing."
Dr. Malhotra, who previously served on the faculty at Georgetown University, now works at BCRF to help advance breast cancer research. She highlighted the growing number of targeted treatments developed in recent decades.
"In 1977, we had one targeted treatment for breast cancer. Twenty years later, we had two," Dr. Malhotra explained. "Fast forward to today, we have over 30 targeted treatments, 19 in the last decade alone. So, it’s moving very quickly, and we're proud to say that our investigators are involved in all of those, getting them across the finish line."
She also stressed the importance of recognizing changes in one's body and speaking up during medical appointments.
"My biggest thing is to know your body because if you feel that something is out of whack — even if you think it's minor — it’s worth it to talk to your doctor about," Dr. Malhotra said.
There may be a promising new treatment on the horizon for advanced breast cancer patients, according to developing research.
Researchers are studying the cancer-killing drug trastuzumab rezetecan for those with ERBB2-low metastatic breast cancer, whose tumors have low levels of HER2, a protein that can help cancer cells grow.
A phase 3 clinical trial called HORIZON-Breast06 sought to determine whether the drug works better than standard chemotherapy for patients with this cancer type.
The researchers analyzed 551 female patients across 73 hospitals in China who were randomly assigned to receive either the drug intravenously every three weeks, or the physician’s choice of chemotherapy. The study period lasted from June 2023 to August 2025.
The drug significantly delayed cancer progression compared with chemotherapy, giving patients more than a year before their cancer began growing again.
The median time without tumor growth was 16.4 months compared to 6.8 months with chemo.
Patients who received trastuzumab rezetecan were 73% less likely to have their cancer worsen or die during the study than patients who received chemotherapy.
The drug appeared to delay cancer progression in patients with both hormone receptor-positive and hormone receptor-negative breast cancer.
The results were published in JAMA.
Tumors shrank in 75.5% of patients who received the drug, compared with 41.2% of those who received chemotherapy.
At the 12-month mark, 90.6% of trastuzumab rezetecan patients were alive, compared to 81.4% of chemo patients.
The authors concluded that trastuzumab rezetecan provided "significant progression-free survival benefit over physician’s choice of chemotherapy in patients with ERBB2-low advanced breast cancer."
Loren Rourke, a Texas-based breast surgical oncologist and author in Texas, called the results "incredibly encouraging."
"When you're talking about women living with advanced breast cancer, those months matter," Rourke, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital. "They represent more time when the cancer is being held in check and potentially more opportunities to enjoy life without the disease getting worse."
What makes these findings especially exciting, according to the oncologist, is that the treatment showed benefits across different types of breast cancer.
"It's another important step forward, and it gives us genuine reason to be hopeful," she said. "A treatment that can keep cancer from progressing for a longer period has the potential to make an enormous difference in a patient's life."
While the drug may cause fewer serious lung problems than similar treatments, it was linked to other side effects, including anemia and other blood-related problems.
Serious side effects occurred in more than 84% of patients who received the new drug, compared with nearly 68% of those who received chemotherapy.
Rourke emphasized the importance of considering the side effects, "because more time without cancer progression doesn't automatically mean better quality of life."
"We need to better understand the side effects, particularly the significant decreases in blood counts that can lead to fatigue, anemia and increased risk of infection," she said.
The researchers acknowledged that toxicity occurred more frequently and often required dose modification, although they said these effects were "generally manageable."
"As exciting as these findings are, there are still important questions we need to answer," Rourke told Fox News Digital. "We know this treatment delayed cancer progression, but we don't yet know whether it will help patients live longer. That's an important distinction."
Alphabet shed around $500 billion in market value on Thursday after its stock tanked 13%.
If the losses persist, it will be the second-largest one-day drop in market cap for any company.
Shares of Google's parent company fell after its earnings disappointed investors.
Alphabet is on track to suffer its biggest-ever one-day market-cap wipeout, and the second-largest value drop in stock-market history.
Shares of Google's parent company slumped by as much as 13.5% in early trading on Thursday, slashing Alphabet's market capitalization by over $500 billion, from around $3.9 trillion to $3.4 trillion.
If the losses persist until the close, it would be the second-largest one-day loss of market capitalization ever. Only AI chipmaker Nvidia has lost more value in a single day, when it shed close to $600 billion on January 27, 2025, on fears that China's DeepSeek would steal its lunch.
Alphabet's shares slumped after its earnings report on Wednesday showed about $9.1 billion in negative free cash flow as it spent heavily on AI infrastructure, and profits that fell short of Wall Street's forecasts.
Google's AI search revenue also lagged expectations, despite CEO Sundar Pichai saying on the earnings call that AI helped search queries grow at the fastest year-over-year pace in five years.
Search revenue of $63 billion came in below analysts' estimates and was virtually flat compared to the previous quarter.
That came as a shock because search revenue had beaten Wall Street's estimates in each of its four previous quarterly earnings reports.
"It's worth noting that the strong growth in AI Mode queries had an impact because of the lower monetization we were seeing in AI Mode," Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer, said on the call.
He also announced that Google is introducing ads in AI Mode to more users, including in international markets for the first time.
The rise of generative AI has shaken up Google's core business as chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude give people an alternative way to search. While Google has its own chatbot, Gemini, and has integrated it into its search engine with AI Mode, revenue is lagging behind its popularity.
"Just like our shift to mobile over a decade ago, we are focused on building the best Search user experience, followed by monetization," Pichai said.
As well as one of the market's biggest-ever single-day value losses, if Alphabet stock closes more than 9.77% lower on Thursday, it would be the company's worst post-earnings percentage drop since going public in 2004.
"In the AI trade you need a clean story to pique investor interest. But it only matters if numbers track in the right direction," Mark Shmulik, a senior analyst at Bernstein, wrote in a note.
"Is Google an AI winner? Probably, but not today."
A new study found cellular differences between colon cancer tumors in younger and older patients.
Sheila Alonso/Getty Images
A new study explored the differences between tumors in younger and older colon cancer patients.
Younger patients sometimes had more aggressive, treatment-resistant forms of colon cancer.
Staying active, cutting down on processed foods, and getting screened are good ways to lower risk.
People under 50 aren't only at a higher risk of colon cancer today than they were a few decades ago. They're also developing a different, sometimes more aggressive form of it compared to older patients, scientists say.
A new study published in Nature Medicine analyzed 189 tumors from colorectal cancer patients aged 29 to over 90, including measurements of gene activity in more than 850,000 cancer cells.
The goal was to look at how tumors varied "across the entire spectrum of age," Dr. Ana Anderson, a co-senior author of the study who leads the cancer immunology program at the Gene Lay Institute at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, told Business Insider. "Is it the same colon cancer but just happening in younger people, or is there something different about it?"
As a result, the study was able to map out gradual, subtle differences in colorectal cancer tumors correlated with age. While the researchers couldn't pinpoint exactly why tumors in younger people look different, Anderson said the study is an exciting starting point for further research.
"There's a lot of interest in lifestyle factors and environmental exposures as potential contributors; however, nothing specific has been pinned down," Anderson said. "What we did is take a rather simple but comprehensive approach just to try to understand the disease itself."
Younger patients' tumors had a different cellular makeup
Fibroblasts are types of stromal cells that can create a "shield" around tumors and make them harder to treat. They were more prevalent in younger patients.
wildpixel/Getty Images
The study's researchers couldn't definitely state that colon cancer in younger patients is always more aggressive — that would require more study.
However, what they did find was that younger patients "generally have more aggressive disease and they are generally more resistant to the standard of care therapies, which is mostly chemotherapy," Anderson said.
Tumors in younger patients generally had a higher presence of supporting and connecting cells known as stromal cells. Stromal cells, such as fibroblasts, can produce factors that suppress the immune response, making it harder for chemotherapy drugs to work. "They essentially can form a shield that protects the tumor from infiltration," Anderson said.
The study found that the presence of stromal cells generally declined from younger to older patients, and the youngest patients tended to have the highest number of stromal cells in proportion to cancer cells.
The reverse was true for the oldest patients, who generally had the fewest stromal cells and the highest numbers of cancer cells.
Researchers narrowed down where to look for answers
Not enough research has been done on long non-coding RNAs, which had higher levels of activity in younger colon cancer patients.
InnerVerse/Getty Images
Younger patients also had higher activity of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), which are associated with cellular signaling in cancer. The study also found gene activity in younger patients that suggested stronger signaling between cells — potentially helping cancer cells move and invade nearby tissue.
The problem is, lncRNAs are still a fairly recent discovery; they only became linked to cancer research in the late 2000s, with some poorly understood ones referred to as "dark RNAs." "A lot of them have just not been researched, and that's why they're called 'dark RNAs' — it's a big mystery," Anderson said.
For that reason, she said it was the finding she considered most promising. "There's a world of biology to be discovered there — we know where to focus our research efforts," she said.
Anderson, an immunologist, also hopes to explore the presence of immune cells in younger colon cancer cases, as immune cells are involved in killing cancer cells but were "under-captured" in this study, she said. "There are many types of immune cells," she said. "Are there different subsets that are more present in the young tumors or absent in the young tumors versus the older tumors?"
Reduce your risk with these simple habits
Regular exercise can reduce your risk of developing colon cancer.
ArtistGNDphotography/Getty Images
While the study doesn't present any immediate new takeaways for young people concerned about colon cancer, Anderson suggested following existing guidance for lowering your risk.
She noted that the recommended screening age for most people was lowered from 50 to 45 a few years ago, but that it's wise to see a doctor sooner if you experience common colon cancer symptoms like rectal bleeding, abdominal pain, bloating, or changes in bowel movements.
If you're "extra cautious," she said, it's never a bad idea to stay active and cut down on inflammatory foods such as ultraprocessed snacks and alcohol.
About 60,000 Microsoft employees are eligible to consider a buyout. HR experts say the payout is only one part of the decision.
Craig T Fruchtman/Getty Images
With Microsoft offering about 60,000 staff buyouts, many will be deciding whether to take one.
Business Insider asked HR experts what advice they'd give workers offered buyouts.
Their advice included budgeting for a longer job search and pricing out replacement health coverage.
About 60,000 Microsoft employees have a choice to make: take a buyout and leave at the end of the year, or stay.
Eligible employees have until early December to decide. Offers reviewed by Business Insider vary by level, location, and length of service.
For US employees at levels 64 and below, the cash offer is one week of base pay for every six months of service; at levels 65 to 67, it is two weeks for every six months. The offers also include continued stock vesting and health insurance.
Buyouts are a reasonably common offering for corporations looking to cut costs, but deciding whether to take one can be difficult. Business Insider spoke to two HR experts to ask which factors employees should weigh and which questions they should ask before signing.
Read their top tips below:
Work out what the offer is really worth
"The number is important," Marjo Miles, founder and principal consultant at The Ember Effect, told Business Insider. "But really, there’s more than that number."
Employees should check what happens to their stock, paid time off, health coverage, and any bonus or commission due after they leave, Miles said. They should calculate how long the payout would cover household expenses after tax and deductions.
Deborah Saneman, CEO of workforce management and HR technology company Würk, told Business Insider that employees should price out replacement health insurance: how long coverage lasts, what they would pay monthly, and whether the company covers any of the premium.
She also recommended checking which shares would vest after their exit. "The headline number is only part of the picture, so get the details in writing," she said.
Plan for a longer job search
"Whatever somebody thinks their job search is going to take, double it in your mind and plan for that," Miles said.
She suggested using the time before the deadline to explore options. "Instead of deciding today, maybe start your job search today, she said.
Contacting people in their network and applying for roles could give employees a clearer sense of their prospects before they commit to leaving.
Saneman said employees should ask about career coaching, outplacement, or training. "A payout covers your bills, but help with the search itself can shorten the runway," she said.
Consider what staying could look like
Turning down a buyout does not guarantee job security, Miles said, though she cautioned against assuming layoffs will follow. Companies could leave vacant roles unfilled or take other steps to meet a savings goal.
"There are a lot of different ways that organizations can strategically get to their goal without just immediately doing a reduction," she said.
Saneman also cautioned against predicting what Microsoft or any other company might do next. "The benefit of a buyout is that it's on your own terms and gives you time to plan your next steps," she said. "A layoff may not."
Miles suggested asking how departing colleagues' work would be redistributed and what support would be available.
Saneman said employees should consider their longer-term plans: "The right choice is the one that fits where you want your career and your life to go, not just the one that looks best on paper."
Questions to ask before taking a buyout
Business Insider asked Saneman and Miles to share what questions they'd advise employees considering buyouts to ask. Read their four key questions below:
Would I be eligible for rehiring?
"Microsoft is a large organization, and professional paths may cross again in the future," Miles said. That may not make or break the decision, but it is worth knowing.
Will the payout be a lump sum or continued salary?
This can affect when the money arrives and how health insurance and other benefits are handled.
What happens to my bonus or commission?
Employees should check whether they will receive any payment due after their exit date and have the answer documented by HR.
What help will I get finding another job?
Saneman suggested asking about career coaching, interview preparation, and training to build new skills.
Jean Kaseya, of the Africa CDC, warns of the illness spreading like Covid unless more funding is secured to increase preparedness and possible treatment
The “unprecedented” spread of the Ebola outbreak means it could reach the UK and other countries, according to one of Africa’s top health officials.
As the current outbreak reached 10,000 cases, with almost 5,000 deaths, Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared the outbreak to the Covid pandemic, which first took hold in China before spreading to countries across the world, claiming millions of lives, and ravaging health systems and economies.
Experts say symptoms such as dark circles under the eyes, grey skin, cracked lips and hair loss can be a warning sign – but there are other factors too
TikTok is rife with influencers warning of “ferritin face”, a term they use to describe the pallor, dark circles, dry skin, and hair loss claimed to indicate low iron stores. But is this based on fact or fiction, and when is it time to head to the GP?
Indonesia is battling its worst wildfires in more than a decade, made worse by El Niño. Many were deliberately set to clear land for farming, including palm oil plantations. More than 12,000 schools across Indonesia have closed because of the toxic haze. Natanael Undas, a school principal and photographer, has been documenting the fires on social media.
Os analistas do banco francês referem que o fracasso no negócio com a Moeve vai remover da mesa um dos grandes catalisadores para as ações da empresa. O preço-alvo foi revisto em baixa de quatro euros.
A JB Capital prevê que as novas regras para o comércio online na UE tenham um impacto acima do esperado nos resultados dos CTT. As ações chegaram a afundar mais de 7% e a capitalização bolsista foi reduzida em mais de 50 milhões.
A prominent researcher claims to have a revolutionary approach to “interpretability,” or the science of why A.I. models do what they do. Other experts aren’t so sure.
Tel Aviv University student finds evidence locked in tiny piece of amber; lizard tails keep wriggling long after detachment, distracting predators while the animal escapes
When actor Christina Applegate revealed that she had been misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis, it triggered not only an outpouring of empathy for her, but raised important questions about how often people are told they have the condition when they don't. William Brangham discussed why MS can be so difficult to diagnose with Dr. Michael Kornberg of Johns Hopkins University.
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