CHICAGO – Results from the phase III POLO trial presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology's (ASCO's) 2019 annual meeting on Sunday showed that treatment with Lynparza (olaparib, Astrazeneca plc/Merck & Co Inc.) after platinum chemotherapy nearly doubled the progression-free interval (progression-free survival, PFS) in a group of 154 metastatic pancreatic cancer patients with germline BRCA mutations, from 3.8 to 7.4 months.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have demonstrated that they were able to restore learning abilities in a rat model of fragile X syndrome (FXS) through temporary treatment with the cholesterol-lowering agent lovastatin. 

Characterized by large numbers of benign but highly disfiguring tumors, neurofibromatosis 1 (NF-1) is anything but a subtle disease. Because they are glaringly conspicuous, research into NF-1 has largely focused on the tumors themselves. But in the May 20, 2019, issue of PLoS ONE, researchers have reported new insights into the disease that stem from looking not at the tumors themselves but at tumor-free skin from NF-1 patients.

The words "crystal" and "healing" in the same sentence do not, by and large, connote solid scientific ground for the approach being advocated. But there is an exception to every rule, and researchers at Ghent University have described Charcot-Leyden crystals (CLCs) as a targetable feature of some allergic diseases. CLCs are made up of the protein galectin-10. 

For the immune system, the self and non-self are something like the proverbial rock and a hard place. In order to be effective, the system as a whole needs to react vigorously to pathogens. But that vigorous reaction can also damage the organism it is meant to protect. The conundrum is on display in influenza infections.

Researchers at Stony Brook University have found a way to keep insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) from deactivating insulin without affecting its role in degrading glucagon. 

SAN DIEGO – "Wherever I look, I see the ugly face of complement." That, complement researcher Jörg Köhl told the audience at the 2019 annual meeting of the American Association of Immunologists (AAI), was the comment of a research colleague who repeatedly stumbled across complement contributions to what had once seemed unrelated research.

SAN DIEGO – Almost exactly 10 years ago, on May 28, 2009, Steven Rosenberg was the first person to treat a patient with CAR T cells. That patient, a 48-year-old construction worker with metastatic non-Hodgkin lymphoma, is now 58 and remains in remission, as well as working full time. Two CAR T-cell therapies have been approved, and more than 1,000 patients have been treated with them.

Researchers at Pisa's Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna and King's College London have shown that therapeutic administration of miR-199 stimulated cardiac repair in pigs after experimentally induced heart attacks. 

PHILADELPHIA – "Because of our assumption that structure determines function, for a long time [low-complexity domains] were not considered important," J. Paul Taylor told the audience at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) annual meeting's Frontiers in Neuroscience plenary session. Such low-complexity domains (LCDs) were thought of as junk parts of proteins, in analogy to junk DNA.