Two new studies from researchers at EMBL, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK, published in Nature, show that state-shifting in glioblastoma—the deadliest and most common type of malignant brain tumor in adults—follows predictable patterns, offering hope for future therapies. Glioblastoma cells exist in a variety of states with distinct molecular features, and their plasticity helps them evade anti-cancer treatments; the prevalent view had been that such state-shifting is essentially random and very difficult to predict. Funded by a Wellcome Leap grant, Omer Bayraktar's team examined DNA, epigenetic marks, and RNA in tumors from 12 patients, generating the largest glioblastoma molecular atlas to date, and teamed up with Oliver Stegle's team at EMBL Heidelberg and DKFZ. Together, the researchers found that, contrary to what was known before, glioblastoma cells followed certain stereotypical, predictable paths between cell states, and that different cell states occupy different spatial niches inside a tumor.