“The association between air pollution and lung cancer is not new,” Charles Swanton told the audience at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2022 Congress. But as with so many associations, causation has been hard to establish, partly due to the puzzling absence of mutations.
ESMO late breakers were released Sept. 8, and scientifically at least, a key theme of the meeting will be that cell therapies, at long last, are capable of besting solid tumors.
How well connectomic models of the brain could be used to the predict performance of a specific person on cognitive tests was influenced by sociodemographic characteristics of that person, such as age and education. The findings, which were published in the Aug. 25, 2022, issue of Nature, suggest that models of cognition “are not predicting unitary cognitive constructs, such as episodic memory. Rather, they are predicting composites: measures of these constructs intertwined with sociodemographic and clinical covariates,” first author Abigail Greene told BioWorld.
Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body, which would seem to make it an unlikely source for an immunotherapy target. But it is where researchers from Immatics Biotechnologies GmbH and the University of Pennsylvania have found a target that was expressed on stromal cells in a number of different solid tumors, but very rare in normal tissues.
Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body, which would seem to make it an unlikely source for an immunotherapy target. But it is where researchers from Immatics SA and the University of Pennsylvania have found a target that was expressed on stromal cells in a number of different solid tumors, but very rare in normal tissues.
Gate Neurosciences Inc. was first founded in 2019, but officially launched last week with two clinical-stage assets and a bold goal: to develop better drugs for CNS disorders and identify better-suited patients for those drugs. The company’s first molecular target is the NMDA receptor. Gate has acquired the rights to two NMDA receptor modulators, zelquistinel and apimostinel.
A phase II trial this week showed that combining the diabetes drug semaglutide (Novo Nordisk A/S) with a fixed-dose combination of Cagrisema (cagrilintide/semaglutide) led to “numerically higher” reductions in both HbA1c and body weight than either component alone. And on the preclinical side, researchers from the Novo Nordisk Research Center and the Helmholtz Diabetes Center reported that linking the dual PPAR activator tesaglitazar to GLP-1 improved glucose control in male mice. Both bits of news illustrate that GLP-1R agonists, which are also called incretin mimetics and GLP-1 analogs, are likely to continue their success across multiple areas of medical care.
Treating mice with butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that is normally produced by beneficial gut microbes, prevented anaphylactic shock in allergic mice when they were exposed to peanuts after treatment. It also reduced inflammation in animals with colitis.
Treating mice with butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that is normally produced by beneficial gut microbes, prevented anaphylactic shock in allergic mice when they were exposed to peanuts after treatment. It also reduced inflammation in animals with colitis.
Exploiting deficiencies in tumor cells’ inability to repair damage to their DNA has been one of the most successful endeavors of oncology research in recent memory. There are four approved PARP inhibitors to treat certain types of breast, ovarian, pancreatic and prostate cancers. Multiple other synthetic lethal combinations that might push repair-deficient tumors into cell death are being investigated. In the July 29, 2022, issue of Science, researchers at Yale University have described another approach to turning DNA repair defect against itself. Startup Modifi Biosciences Inc. is now on course to translate that work.
