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Category: biotech/medical

Radiation Therapy Target Objectives For Tonsillar Cancer Treated with Unilateral Radiation Therapy — A Replanning Study From TROG 12.01

New in the RedJournal: replanned TROG 12.01 unilateral cases to define guidelines for unilateral RT planning with maximal midline and contralateral sparing. @TROGfightcancer RadOnc HNcsm.

Unilateral radiotherapy (URT) is an effective treatment strategy in selected patients with lateralized tonsil cancer. However, there is a lack of established planning guidelines for URT treatment leading to suboptimal optimization of contralateral and midline organs at risk (OARs). This study aimed to re-optimize URT plans to maximize sparing of midline and contralateral OAR’s while maintaining target coverage, providing dosimetric guidelines for URT planning.

Cancer Outcomes Across Tumors Predicted by CCL3 Production by Neutrophils

Neutrophils are known as first responders to threatening infections and feature prominently in the microenvironment of tumors to resist cancer progression. Though neutrophils have been linked to the growth of multiple cancers, such as lung and breast, these cells can assume multiple functional states.

In a new study published in Cancer Cell titled, “ CCL3 is produced by aged neutrophils across cancers and promotes tumor growth,” researchers from Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Lausanne have discovered a gene expression program executed by tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) and a corresponding biomarker that uniformly support cancer cell survival and tumor progression across human and murine tumors.

Results demonstrate that TANs characterized by this conserved genetic program are a central variable of the tumor microenvironment (TME) linked to cancer progression. The authors also identify an associated marker, CCL3, as key to supporting cancer growth.

Cancer vaccine shows promise against HPV-related throat tumors in early study

A vaccine designed to fight HPV-driven head and neck cancers has shown promising results in a lab study in human tissues and mice.

If proven effective in humans, the therapeutic shot could complement standard cancer therapies, and its design may help scientists build better vaccines for other diseases.

Abstract: This Research Article adds new information to our understanding of critical illness phenotypes

Narges Alipanah-Lechner & team perform multi-omics analysis of patients with ARDS, revealing 4 molecular signatures associated with death, all characterized by mitochondrial dysfunction.

1Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy, and Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, UCSF, San Francisco, California, USA.

2Division of Clinical and Translational Research, Department of Anesthesia, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

3Cardiovascular Research Institute, UCSF, San Francisco, California, USA.

SNAP-25 disease variants affect synaptic transmission by destabilizing SNARE complexes within a multimeric SNARE ring

Vold et al. studied two SNAP-25 variants with different clinical severity. Variants destabilize the SNARE complex and reduce binding to the Munc18-1:VAMP2:syntaxin-1 acceptor complex, with correlated effects on neurotransmitter release. Effects of co-expression of variant and wild-type SNAP-25 were modeled by assuming the co-existence of both species in a ring of SNARE complexes.

Using synthetic biology and AI to address global antimicrobial resistance threat

James J. Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and faculty co-lead of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health, is embarking on a multidisciplinary research project that applies synthetic biology and generative artificial intelligence to the growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The research project is sponsored by Jameel Research, part of the Abdul Latif Jameel International network. The initial three-year, $3 million research project in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and Institute of Medical Engineering and Science focuses on developing and validating programmable antibacterials against key pathogens.

AMR — driven by the overuse and misuse of antibiotics — has accelerated the rise of drug-resistant infections, while the development of new antibacterial tools has slowed. The impact is felt worldwide, especially in low-and middle-income countries, where limited diagnostic infrastructure causes delays or ineffective treatment.

Digital twin reveals how eye cells lose their organization in leading cause of vision loss

National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers have developed a digital replica of crucial eye cells, providing a new tool for studying how the cells organize themselves when they are healthy and affected by diseases. The platform opens a new door for therapeutic discovery for blinding diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of vision loss in people over 50. The study is published in the journal npj Artificial Intelligence.

“This work represents the first-ever subcellular resolution digital twin of a differentiated human primary cell, demonstrating how the eye is an ideal proving ground for developing methods that could be used more generally in biomedical research,” Kapil Bharti, Ph.D., scientific director at the NIH’s National Eye Institute (NEI).

The researchers created a highly detailed, 3D data-driven digital twin of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells, which perform vital recycling and supportive roles to light-sensing photoreceptors in the retina. In diseases such as AMD, RPE cells die, which eventually leads to the death of photoreceptor cells, causing loss of vision.

Cell division spindles self-organize like active liquid crystals—a theory that holds up

When a cell divides, it performs a feat of microscopic choreography—duplicating its DNA and depositing it into two new cells. The spindle is the machinery behind that process: It latches onto chromosomes (where DNA is stored) and separates them so they can settle into their new homes. This tricky process can sometimes go wrong, causing infertility, genetic disorders, or cancer.

Scientists have a good understanding of what spindles are made of: long, thin rods called microtubules as well as a variety of associated motor proteins. However, how these microtubules interact and organize to guide the spindles’ function has remained a mystery.

One approach to understand how the spindle self-organizes is to treat it like an active liquid crystal. Liquid crystals, like spindles, are made up of elongated subunits. Unlike liquid crystals in LCD displays, which require an external electric field to reorient their subunits, spindles are active materials that generate forces internally.

Major depressive disorder shares immune abnormalities and potential therapies with inflammatory skin diseases

A team of leading clinical research scientists from the Departments of Psychiatry and Dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has found that the serum of patients with major depressive disorder shares immune abnormalities with inflammatory skin diseases, most notably the common Th2 immune pathway that is implicated in atopic dermatitis. Because these skin diseases are treatable, the findings suggest new therapeutic possibilities for psychiatric illness as well.

The study findings, published in Molecular Psychiatry, underscore the potential role of the Th2 axis in major depressive disorder and highlight the potential of targeting this specific immune pathway that involves interleukin-4 receptor alpha, a cell receptor known to play a key role in regulating inflammation, as a disease-modifying treatment for this psychiatric disorder.

Furthermore, the back-translational drug repurposing strategy employed in this study may offer a new approach to identifying immunomodulatory drugs in psychiatry.

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