The big advantage of cell culture to model diseases is its throughput. “You can play the disease over and over again in the dish,” Clive Svendsen told the audience at the International Society of Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) Annual Meeting held in Hamburg last week. That high throughput, however, is not particularly useful if the cell lines themselves do not accurately model the disease. Cancer cell lines are used in many cell culture experiments far beyond cancer for their ability to grow. But they are “highly abnormal,” Bill Skarnes told the audience at an innovation showcase, as well as quite unstable. “I don’t think the [HEK-293] cell line is the same in your lab as it is in the lab next door,” Skarnes said.

One of the most common causes of adverse neurological disabilities in newborns is neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. Therapeutic hypothermia (TH) is the standard therapy, but it is not efficient in all cases. Cannabinoids have raised interest as therapeutics as they are neuroprotective.

The word “niche” implies a specialized environment. But to Fiona Doetsch, the stem cell niche is anything but. For brain stem cells, “the whole organism is the niche,” Doetsch told the audience at the third plenary session of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) annual meeting in Hamburg this week. It’s a surprising idea at first, given the brain’s protection from many circulating substances via a series of barriers, including the blood-brain barrier and the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier.

Ependymoma is a brain cancer that occurs during childhood and is usually resistant to cytotoxic therapy. Molecular profiling has helped in better understanding the mechanisms behind the disease and has unveiled EPH receptor B2 (EPHB2) as a critical player in driving disease.

Researchers from Igyxos SA presented the preclinical profile of IGX-12, a humanized IgG4 antibody, in both female and male infertility models.

Researchers from the University of California San Francisco and Northwestern University recently presented findings from a study that aimed to evaluate the role of lin-28 homolog B (LIN28B), an RNA binding protein expressed in a variety of cancers, in diffuse midline glioma (DMG).

Many patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or frontotemporal dementia (FTD) harbor the (G4C2)n pathogenic repeat expansion in the C9orf72 gene, which leads to aggregating dipeptide proteins, mainly poly-glycine-alanine (poly-GA).

Recent studies have highlighted the potential role of the small GTPase Rac1 as new therapeutic target in SHH-medulloblastoma due to its regulation of Hedgehog signaling via the GLI1 and GLI2 transcription factors.

Large-scale human genetic studies have revealed that loss-of-function INHBE variants are associated with a lower abdominal to gluteofemoral fat ratio, improved metabolic profile, and reduced fasting glucose levels.