Thick skin.

Thicker fat. Obesity has gotten a bad rap for a whole host of medical problems, including cancer where its associated with both quicker tumor progression and dampened immune responses. But obesity hasn’t let that get it down, with higher rates than ever in developed countries, leading to this review pondering the paradoxical beneficial effect of obesity on immune checkpoint inhibitor efficacy. Theories underlying this observation include differences in nutrient-rich diets and microbiomes that, if elucidated, could pave the way to harnessing larger therapeutic windows. TBL: Fat is overcoming its stigma to prove worthy of further investigation. | Murphy, JAMA 2019