BiotechNews1

Originally published by Meg Wingerter, The Denver Post, on March 14, 2024             Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain A process of taking patients' own cells and reprogramming them to fight cancer has been a last-ditch option for blood cancer patients when nothing else worked, but a new study underway in Aurora is trying to determine whether more patients could benefit from trying the procedure sooner. Chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy , known as CAR-T , is a type of immunotherapy that involves taking cells from the patient's body and altering them to attack cancerous cells that have specific proteins on their surfaces. The patient ...

O riginally published by University of Aberdeen, on January 15, 2024   Credit: Molecular Therapy (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.ymthe.2023.11.028 Researchers at the University of Aberdeen working on a partnership study that looks at how the immune system could help improve cancer treatment have found a potential new way to aid and develop better cancer therapies . Together with colleagues at the University of Liverpool and the Center for Cancer Immunology at the University of Southampton , researchers examined the role of CTLA-4 , a cell surface molecule that plays a crucial role in the immune system . Known as a "checkpoint" receptor responsible for maintaining immune balance and tolerance , CTLA-4 works to prevent the immune system becoming too active at the end of a normal immune response. However, it is also subverted by cancer cells to prevent the immune system from attacking them. Researchers developed antibodies targeting CTLA-4 and these have shown promise in tr...

O riginally published by University of California - Santa Barbara, on January 7, 2024   A Petri dish transforms into a canvas in Ph.D. student Hadley Hanson's painting of macrophages engulfing cancer cells. Credit: Hadley Hanson Scientists have solved a cellular murder mystery nearly 25 years after the case went cold. Following a trail of evidence from fruit flies to mice to humans revealed that cannibalistic cells likely cause a rare human immunodeficiency . Now the discovery shows promise for enhancing an up-and-coming cancer treatmen t. "This paper takes us from very fundamental cell biology in a fly, to explaining a human disease and harnessing that knowledge for a cancer therapy," said UC Santa Barbara 's Denise Montell. "Each one of those steps feels like a major discovery, but here they are, all in one paper." Researchers in Montell's lab published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and are now investi...

Originally published by Hudson Institute of Medical Research, on October 20, 2023 Associate Professor Samuel Forster from Hudson Institute of Medical Research is developing new ways of understanding interactions within the human gut microbiome. Credit: Hudson Institute of Medical Research The more diverse species in your gut, the better it is for your health. Now an international team led by the Hudson Institute of Medical Research has found a way to determine which species are important and how they interact to create a healthy microbiome . Understanding these relationships opens the door to a new world of medical opportunities for conditions from inflammatory bowel disease to infections , autoimmune diseases and cancer s. Associate Professor Samuel Forster and his team at Hudson Institute of Medical Research, working with collaborators from the Institute for Systems Biology in the U.S. and local collaborators at Monash University and Monash Health, have spent years stud...

 Originally published by University of California, Irvine on May 8, 2023   A hairpin loop from a pre-mRNA. Highlighted are the nucleobases (green) and the ribose-phosphate backbone (blue). Note that this is a single strand of RNA that folds back upon itself. Credit: Vossman/ Wikipedia Researchers from the University of California, Irvine have developed a DNA enzyme—or DNAzyme—that can distinguish between two RNA strands inside a cell and cut the disease-associated strand while leaving the healthy strand intact. This breakthrough "gene silencing" technology could revolutionize the development of DNAzymes for treating cancer, infectious diseases and neurological disorders. Read more

Originally published by Jennifer Nalewicki on January 25, 2023 Ants use their antennae to sniff out cancer Since they don't have noses, ants use their antennae to sniff out cancer. (Image credit: Rob Ault via Getty)   Ants can be trained to detect cancer in urine, a new study finds. Although ant sniffing is a long way from being used as a diagnostic tool in humans, the results are encouraging, the researchers said. Because ants lack noses, they use olfactory receptors on their antennae to help them find food or sniff out potential mates. For the study, published Jan. 25 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , scientists trained nearly three dozen silky ants (Formica fusca) to use these acute olfactory receptors for a different task: finding tumors. Original article