Study also identifies potential path to making immunotherapy effective against the deadly, treatment-resistant cancer.
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Table Of Contents Proliferation and Apoptosis Adaptor Protein 15 (PEA15), a Potential Oncogenic Regulator of VHL and HIF1A Identified through Proteomic Analysis in Hepatocellular Carcinoma.
Smaller gene-editing system could expand treatment options for cancer, ALS and other diseases.
A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research team has discovered an enhanced CRISPR gene-editing system that could enable targeted delivery inside the human body — a key step toward broader clinical use. Researchers identified a naturally occurring enzyme, Al3Cas12f, that is small enough to fit into adeno-associated virus vectors, a leading targeted delivery method for gene therapies. They then engineered an enhanced version that dramatically improved gene-editing performance in human cells.
The advance addresses a major limitation in CRISPR technology. Commonly used gene-editing proteins are too large for targeted delivery systems, restricting clinical applications to cells modified outside the body, such as blood and bone marrow.
Here, Johann de Bono, Luke Gaughan & team identify the protein TRA2B as being key for the synthesis of AR-Vs.
1Newcastle University Centre for Cancer, Paul O’Gorman Building, Framlington Place, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.
2The Institute for Cancer Research, London, United Kingdom.
3The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom.
4Newcastle University Bioinformatics Service Unit, Medical School, Newcastle University, Newcastle, United Kingdom.
Scientists have developed a new way to fight gum disease without wiping out the mouth’s helpful bacteria—a major shift from traditional treatments. Instead of killing everything, this targeted approach blocks only the harmful microbes that drive periodontitis, allowing beneficial bacteria to thrive and restore balance naturally.
The debilitating, chronic loss of joint cartilage known as osteoarthritis causes pain and bone decay for hundreds of millions of people every day, but new help may be on the way – in the form of a simple, single shot.
Based on ongoing animal experiments, injecting a carefully engineered, slow-release drug-delivery system into the damaged joint can coax the body’s own cartilage and bone cells to carry out an effective repair job in just a few weeks.
“In two years, we were able to go from a moonshot idea to developing these therapies to demonstrating that they reverse osteoarthritis in animals,” says chemical and biological engineer Stephanie Bryant, from the University of Colorado (UC) Boulder.
Fine-tuning petal senescence is crucial for the manipulation of flower longevity and genetic improvement. Yang et al. propose a TgFbox1-TgNAC2-TgWIN1 regulatory cascade that integrates ABA and ethylene signaling pathways with cuticular wax biosynthesis to govern petal senescence in a developmentally stage-dependent manner.
In a paradigm-breaking study, researchers have discovered a novel way the immune system, specifically Tcells, attack their target cells, reshaping long-held assumptions in immunology and demonstrating direct implications for the field of cancer immunology and bone marrow transplantation. The team consists of Dr. Pavan Reddy, director of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and his team, in collaboration with Drs. Arul Chinnaiyan, S P Hicks Endowed Professor of Pathology, and Marcin Cieslik, assistant professor of pathology, both from University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. The study is published in Nature Immunology.
Rewriting the rules of T cell biology The immune system relies on molecules called major histocompatibility complexes (MHC) to detect external “threats” to the body, including from cancerous or foreign (allogeneic) cells. Historically, MHC class I molecules were believed to present signals only to CD8+ T cells (“killer” T cells), while MHC II activated CD4+ T cells (“helper” T cells). This division of MHC class roles guided decades of immunology and cancer research.
In an example of collaborative work, Reddy’s graduate students Emma Lauder and Meng-Chih Wu from BCM and Chinnaiyan and Cieslik’s student Mahnoor Gondal, from University of Michigan, worked with colleagues on various components of the work that spanned several years. The work challenges this foundational MHC class-restricted dichotomy and reveals a previously unrecognized role for the class I pathway in CD4+ T cell–mediated immune defense.