The emerging methodology of federated learning can overcome many of the ethical and privacy obstacles preventing patient data from being pooled for analysis, according to research published this week. French-American artificial intelligence (AI) specialist Owkin Inc. has demonstrated the technique can be used to apply machine learning to datasets held at different clinical centers. In a paper published in the Oct. 7 online edition of Nature Medicine, they describe how that generated new insights into the histopathology of malignant mesothelioma.

William Kaelin, Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza have jointly won the 2019 Nobel Prize "for their discoveries of how cells sense oxygen," the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced Monday.

The leucine-repeat rich kinase 2 (Lrrk2) gets most of its attention in the context of Parkinson's disease (PD). Variants in Lrrk2 are a major cause of familial PD (though familial PD makes up only a small fraction of overall PD cases).

Researchers at Princeton University have used a combination of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to identify and produce biologically active small molecules produced by members of the human microbiome. 

Arm and hand prosthetics have long been the focus for researchers aiming to offer sensation as well as more precise and easily controlled movement by connecting patient nerves to sensors in the prosthetic. But now that effort has been extended to leg prosthetics as well.

WASHINGTON – In case any question remained about who shoulders the blame for the serious lack of viable innovation in the infectious disease specialty, a panel at the Infectious Disease Society of America's IDWeek 2019 came with a surprisingly accusatory subtitle: "How ID Killed Antibiotic Development." Observing what Vivo Capital Managing Partner Chen Yu called "an existential crisis for the specialty," the session served as a call for action for infectious disease (ID) doctors to take control of prescribing, put patient care ahead of cost management, and advocate for both faster changes to clinical guidelines and legislative improvements to better position the industry.

At the 2019 Congress of the European Society of Medical Oncology, PARP inhibitors continued their victory march. With the success of the PAOLA-1 trial, reported in Friday's plenary session, as well as the PRIMA and VELIA/GOG-3005 trials, "we've got new front-line data that really introduces a paradigm shift into the way we're going to treat ovarian cancer in the coming years," Jonathan Ledermann, professor of medical oncology at University College London, told the audience at a session on new options on ovarian cancer.

BARCELONA, Spain – Sunday's Presidential Symposium at the 2019 Congress of the European Society of Medical Oncology was devoted to breast cancer studies, and two of those studies – MONARCH-2 and MONALEESA-3 – reported an overall survival (OS) benefit of combining a CDK4/6 inhibitor with endocrine therapy Faslodex (fulvestrant) in metastatic hormone receptor-positive (HR+) breast cancer in several different settings.

BARCELONA, Spain – At the 2019 Conference of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO), results from the ClarIDHy and FIGHT-202 trials, both testing drugs for the treatment of cholangiocarcinoma, illustrated how molecular medicine can bring new treatments to rare tumors.

BARCELONA, Spain – This year's theme at the European Society for Medical Oncology's (ESMO) 2019 annual meeting is "translating science into better patient care."