The best laid plans of mice and men are a bit different - at least when it comes to kidney development. Compared to a mouse, a human has nearly 100 times more nephrons, the functional units of the kidneys. Humans may owe these abundant nephrons to a gene called SIX1, according to a new paper published in the journal Development.

THE UK diagnoses Wilms' tumours - the most common children's kidney cancer - when they are larger and more advanced compared with those diagnosed in Germany, according to a Cancer Research UK-funded study* published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, today (Monday). Researchers from University College London (UCL), Newcastle University, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, the Netherlands Cancer Institute and University Hospital Homburg, Germany compared statistics for more than 1,500 children diagnosed with Wilms' tumour and treated in the UK and Germany between 2002 and 2011. This included 616 children in the UK and 951 in Germany.

Cancer survival still varies widely between European countries despite major improvements in cancer diagnosis and treatment during the first decade of the 21st century, according to the latest EUROCARE-5 reports covering over 50% of the adult and 77% of the childhood population of Europe. The findings, published in The Lancet Oncology, analysed data from cancer registries covering all or part of 29 countries* to compare 5-year survival from diagnosis for more than 9 million adults and 60 415 children diagnosed between 2000 and 2007.