Delivering antibodies in the form of their DNA could enable their therapeutic use under several circumstances where traditional antibodies fall short. One of those is resource-poor settings where the current cost of antibodies makes them a nonstarter. Perhaps the largest opportunity to expand antibody use in such settings is for HIV, where broadly neutralizing antibodies have the potential to be the next best thing to a vaccine or a cure – if they can be made to last, for cheap.
Driven by advances in scientific understanding, the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has begun to see successes one subtype at a time. At the 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC), which is currently being held in virtual format, researchers were optimistic that the same path would be possible for small-cell lung cancer (SCLC).
Monoclonal antibodies are a triumph of modern medicine. They are also too expensive to be a standard therapy in all but the wealthiest countries. “Having 10% or 15% of your population on antibodies is not sustainable even in wealthy countries,” Rachel Liberatore told BioWorld. Liberatore is director of research and development at Renbio Inc., which is testing the intramuscular delivery of antibody-encoding DNA to prevent and treat infections, including SARS-CoV-2 and HIV.
Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University have used mouse models to estimate the frequency at which gene therapies delivered by adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors integrated into host DNA, and come up with an estimate of up to roughly 3% – a number that is orders of magnitude higher than previous estimates and would translate into several hundred million cells with integrated viral vectors in an adult liver, assuming that 10% of cells took up the transgene.
In studies that give new insights into both developmental biology and the origins of melanoma, investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College have identified the activity of chromatin remodeling protein ATAD2 as necessary for cells with the oncogenic mutation V600E to give rise to melanomas. Involvement of epigenetic factors in cancers, or their targeting, is not new in cancer – as HDAC inhibitors as well as newer drugs such as the EZH2 inhibitor Tazverik (tazemetostat, Epizyme Inc.) demonstrate. But to Richard White and his colleagues, the point of their work is not so much about individual targets.
In studies that give new insights into both developmental biology and the origins of melanoma, investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College have identified the activity of chromatin remodeling protein ATAD2 as necessary for cells with the oncogenic mutation V600E to give rise to melanomas.
Investigators at MIT have identified a protein capable of delivering its own mRNA to cells, and engineered that protein to deliver mRNA sequences of their choosing. In a mouse model, the team used their approach to deliver the mRNA for two different proteins.
Researchers from Denali Therapeutics Inc. have identified new functional links between progranulin, lysosomal function, and a subtype of frontotemporal dementia caused by progranulin deficiency (FTD-GRN) that suggest progranulin-mediated FTD could be conceptualized as a lysosomal storage disorder (LSD). They also showed that delivery of their experimental therapeutic PTV:PGRN, also known as DNL-593, reduced cell damage and symptoms of FTD in cell and animal models.
A team of researchers has created peptide-like molecules – "peptoids" – with antiviral properties that could circumvent the naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides' shortcomings.
