Investigators at Boston Children's Hospital have demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 infection of blood monocytes and lung macrophages in the lung could kill the cells via pyroptosis, increasing inflammation and leading to severe COVID-19.

There is a project management joke that the first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, whereas the last 10% of the project takes the other 90% of the time.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have identified a nonhormonal form of contraception for males, which left male mice temporarily sterile after a few weeks of administration.

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have turned pancreatic cancer’s immunosuppressive properties, and mechanisms, against itself. The team have used the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes as a delivery vehicle for tetanus toxoid protein, a highly immunogenic antigen that is used in childhood tetanus vaccinations. In mouse models of pancreatic cancer, treatment reduced both primary tumors and metastases, and extended survival.

Researchers at the University of Queensland have found a genetic link between endometriosis and ovarian cancer subtypes, enabling them to identify potential drug targets for therapy and increasing the understanding of both diseases.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a method to efficiently replace microglia, which are brain-specific immune cells, via a modified bone marrow transplant.

By combining an activator of the pro-apoptotic protein Bax with an inhibitor of the anti-apoptotic protein BCL-XL, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have been able to overcome resistance to apoptosis in both a wide range of cell lines and animal studies. The team reported its findings in the March 7, 2022, issue of Nature Communications.

Russia and Belarus are being frozen out of international science, with universities and research institutions across Europe suspending joint research projects and calling a halt to the formation of any new collaborations, following the invasion of Ukraine. Initial sanctions announced by European governments called for the severing of direct institution-to-institution links only, with many universities counseling individual researchers to maintain personal relations with Russian peers.

An analysis of brain scans of participants in the UK Biobank has shown there are significant differences between the condition of the brain before and after mild COVID-19 infection. These included a reduction in overall brain size, reduction in grey matter thickness in the orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampal gyrus, and changes in markers of tissue damage in regions functionally connected to the primary olfactory cortex. Infected participants also showed, on average, a larger cognitive decline than participants who had not contracted COVID-19.

“In 2015, when I started in this field…. people considered breast cancer a cold tumor,” Marleen Kok told the audience at the European Society of Medical Oncology’s 2022 Targeted Anticancer Therapy meeting (ESMO TAT). But the sensitivity of breast cancer to immunotherapy, or lack thereof, is “not a black and white phenomenon.”