Bioluminescent deep-sea creatures illuminate the effectiveness of new cancer therapies

Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC have developed a new laboratory tool, which is poised to improve the development and effectiveness of a burgeoning group of therapies that use patients’ immune systems to fight cancer with genetically engineered CAR-T cells. Called the Topanga assay, the tool was inspired by the beauty of Topanga Beach in Malibu and […]

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New yeast model of metabolic disorders may lead to life-saving therapies

There are hundreds of metabolic disorders—including phenylketonuria, tyrosinemia, maple syrup urine disease and homocystinuria. These disorders lead to congenital diseases that produce a critical enzyme deficiency that interferes with the body’s metabolism. The pathologies and symptoms vary among the diseases, but all of them are usually fatal and have no known cure. Most metabolic disorders affect infants. The majority of […]

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Discovery of new neurons in the inner ear can lead to new therapies for hearing disorders

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified four types of neurons in the peripheral auditory system, three of which are new to science. The analysis of these cells can lead to new therapies for various kinds of hearing disorders, such as tinnitus and age-related hearing loss. The study is published in Nature Communications. When sound reaches the inner ear, […]

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Newly identified drug target in rheumatoid arthritis paves way for development of new therapies

University of Melbourne researchers have identified a protein involved in rheumatoid arthritis-induced inflammation that could lead to new drug treatments for people who do not respond to current therapies. Arthritis is Australia’s most common chronic disease and affects more than 3.5 million people. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) affects about one per cent of the population and is one of the most […]

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Liver cancer cell ‘switch’ found that could improve future therapies

Imperial researchers have found a new cell mechanism that could be used to target tumours in the future. The newly discovered ‘switch’ controls the activity of two proteins – ‘deleted in liver cancer-1’ (DLC1), a tumour suppressor, and talin. Both proteins control whether or not cancer cells spread to other parts of the body, but the exact mechanisms have remained […]

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Discovery means individualized ovarian, brain cancer therapies

Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered that a molecular communication pathway—thought to be defective in cancer—is a key player in determining the effectiveness of measles virus oncolytic cancer treatment in ovarian and aggressive brain cancers. This discovery enabled researchers to develop an algorithm to predict treatment effectiveness in individual patients. The findings appear in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. […]

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New rapid-fire method using pathology images, tumor data may help guide cancer therapies

By combining data on pathology images of 13 types of cancer and correlating that with clinical and genomic data, a Stony Brook University-led team of researchers are able to identify tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), called TIL maps, which will enable cancer specialists to generate tumor-immune information from routinely gathered pathology slides. Published in Cell Reports , the paper details how TIL […]

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