Since the publication of The Hallmarks of Aging in 2013, aging research has exploded. The field now has more than 300,000 articles on the biological signals of the effect of time on the body. What would Marty McFly, the legendary character from the Back to the Future saga who traveled with his DeLorean time machine from the ‘80s to the ‘50s, think if he visited 2024 and saw laboratories experimenting with techniques to turn back the biological clocks of cells or increase the lifespan of rejuvenated mice?
Cellular immunotherapy is the Lamine Yamal of cancer therapy. It is easy to forget how young the field is – and that as stunning as it is to watch in action already, it is still reaching its full potential. One aspect of doing so is working in a broader range of tumor types. The field made a giant step toward that goal with last week’s approval of Tecelra (afamitresgene autoleucel, Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc), the first CAR T cell to be approved for treatment of a solid tumor.
Cognition Therapeutics Inc. said it is moving to the next stage of clinical testing with oral, small-molecule candidate CT-1812, despite phase II efficacy results falling short of statistical significance in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease and sending shares of the Purchase, N.Y.-based company (NASDAQ:CGTX) falling 44%, or $1.04, to close July 29 at $1.33.
The 2024 meeting of the International AIDS Society (IAS) is wrapping up as the 2024 Olympic Games are about to begin. That timing was probably what prompted the use of multiple sports analogies at Thursday’s plenary session on HIV prevention strategies. Given the decades-long attempts at developing an HIV vaccine, Peter Piot, past IAS president and director emeritus and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said in his introduction: “This is clearly a marathon. But marathons also finish.”
The 2024 meeting of the International AIDS Society (IAS), which is being held in Munich this week, began with the announcement of another curative bone marrow transplant. The new case brings the total number of patients cured of HIV via a bone marrow transplant up to 7 since “Berlin patient” Timothy Ray Brown became the first such person in 2007.
As the hunt goes on for a better treatment in wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), landmark analyses of two batches of phase II gene therapy data billed as positive were disclosed during the American Society of Retina Specialists annual meeting in Stockholm, where 4D Molecular Therapeutics Inc. and Adverum Biotechnologies Inc. offered findings.
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.
The primary-endpoint win by Sensorion SA in a phase II proof-of-concept study with SENS-401 (arazasetron) in hearing loss made public March 11 brought renewed interest in the space, where a number of players are advancing gene therapies. The story marches on, with Montpellier, France-based Sensorion due to discuss the product July 13 at the International Conference on Cochlear Implants and Other Implantable Technologies in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis was renamed, for the first time in 34 years, to metabolic dysfunction associated steatohepatitis (MASH), but a name change is far from being the biggest development in the field, according to experts at Bioplus Interphex (BIX) Korea 2024.
The industry is looking, with renewed hope, to the “promise” of messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics for a wide range of diseases beyond COVID-19, and not only in vaccine form but also for gene and cell therapies.
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