When they work, T cells work great. And the folks at Avidea Technologies Inc. want to make them work more often. Combining expertise in immunology and polymer chemistry, the Baltimore-based startup is developing antigen delivery technology to improve T cell-targeted vaccines.

Two independent groups of researchers have achieved HIV latency reversal not just in T cells in the bloodstream, but also in tissues, in animal models of HIV infection. Latently infected cells, which have nonreplicating HIV integrated into their genomes, are a major barrier to curing HIV, and attempts to reactivate latently infected cells, which would sensitize the virus in them to antiretroviral treatment, are one major area of HIV cure research.

Scientists at the Whitehead Institute have discovered that the ability of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii to cause chronic infections depends on changes orchestrated by a single transcription factor, Bradyzoite-formation deficient 1 (BFD1).

It is equally fair to say that lung cancer treatment has come a long way, and that it has a long way to go. Speaking at a joint conference by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer and the American Association for Cancer Research on lung cancer translational research, William Pao remembered the stark realities of being an oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center just 20 years ago, when the main lung cancer “procedure” done by trainees was to get a DNR, or do-not-resuscitate order, from their patients.

SAN DIEGO – Allele-specific KRAS inhibitors are “the most exciting change coming down the pike for treating KRAS-mutant tumors in the near future,” Ferdinandos Skoulidis said at the sixth joint conference by the American Association for Cancer Research and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer meeting.