Aggressive cancers such as triple‑negative breast cancer urgently need more precise and less toxic treatment options. One promising strategy is to target proteins that appear on the surface of tumour cells but are largely absent from healthy tissues. 

ROR1 is one such emerging target in cancer immunotherapy, yet many existing antibodies bind to regions of the protein that resemble normal human proteins, raising concerns about off‑target effects. 

By combining laboratory research with computational analysis, the team from The University of Queensland, led by Associate Professor Fernando Guimaraes, set out to identify the most distinctive and safest regions of ROR1 to guide the development of next‑generation antibody‑based therapies.