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  After years of lackluster results, cancer vaccines seem poised for success. Finally. Originally published by Cassandra Willyard at MIT Technology Review, on May 3, 2024 Last week of April, Moderna and Merck launched a large clinical tria l in the UK of a promising new cancer therapy : a personalized vaccine that targets a specific set of mutations found in each individual’s tumor. This study is enrolling patients with melanoma . But the companies have also launched a phase III trial for lung cancer . And earlier this month BioNTech and Genentech announced that a personalized vaccine they developed in collaboration shows promise in pancreatic cancer , which has a notoriously poor survival rate. Drug developers have been working for decades on vaccines to help the body’s immune system fight cancer, without much success. But promising results in the past year suggest that the strategy may be reaching a turning point . Will these therapies finally live up to their promise?

Originally published by Lisbeth Heilesen, Aarhus University, on February 27, 2024 Figure shows stress granule formation after oxidative stress in wild-type cells and cells depleted for the ac4C acetyltransferase enzyme NAT10. Credit: Pavel Kudrin A recent study by an international research team has unveiled an exciting discovery about how our cells defend themselves during stressful situations . The research, published in EMBO Reports , shows that a tiny modification in the genetic material , called ac4C, acts as a crucial defender, helping cells create protective storage units known as stress granules . These stress granules safeguard important genetic instructions when the cell is facing challenges. The new findings could help shed light on relevant molecular pathways that could be targeted in disease . Stress granules are an integral part of the stress response that is formed from non-translating mRNAs aggregated with proteins. While much is known about stress granules,

Originally published by Olivia Dimmer, Northwestern University, on November 17, 2023   taRNAs built from an array of IRESs increase reporter gene translation. Credit: Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42252-z A new molecular technology capable of binding to mRNA and regulating gene expression may offer a new avenue for treating diseases caused by haploinsufficiency , or the absence of one functional gene copy, according to a study published in Nature Communications . Messenger RNA, or mRNA , contains instructions for DNA to produce proteins. Many diseases , including cancer and many genetic disorders, result from insufficient gene —and therefore protein—expression, but few strategies exist to correct that kind of dysregulation at a molecular level. The new technology, dubbed "translation-activating RNAs" ( taRNAs ), consists of small molecules programmed to attach to specific mRNA molecules to directly control their translation into proteins,