Clostridioides difficile has been traditionally isolated from healthcare facilities' inpatients, but it is increasingly being identified in people who have not recently been hospitalized and is more and more found in community settings. Investigators from Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania have developed an mRNA-LNP vaccine with promising results in preventing and controlling C. difficile infection.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy moved the needle at the 2024 ECTRIMS (European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis) congress and will continue to do so – not just in multiple sclerosis (MS), but in other autoimmune diseases as well.

The Annual Congress of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS) meeting in Copenhagen this week is celebrating its 40th edition. In recognition of this landmark, the plenary session and opening lecture were attended by Queen Margrethe of Denmark. Afterward, the hot topic session on neuroprotective therapies set the stage for the subsequent discussions on the latest trends in the management and treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS).

Researchers from the UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Cambridge have found how to prevent and reverse tau aggregation using target-specific nanobodies. The team holds great expertise in the role of TRIM21 in the tau environment since William McEwan, senior author of the study, first discovered TRIM21 and, a bit later, defined its contribution to tau immunotherapy efficacy.

Researchers from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) have found that CCN3, a hormone secreted by neurons in the brain, is responsible for maintaining bone strength during lactation.

Researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch have developed a novel tau immunotherapy delivered via intranasal route, able to enter the brain, and recognize and successfully clear tau aggregates in mouse models of tauopathy. Aberrant tau aggregates cause neurodegenerative symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). Although these conditions present phenotypic differences, the fact of sharing tau deposits as a major hallmark tags them as tauopathies.

During the basic science morning track on the last day of this year’s Annual Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA), the attention was focused on oncogenic transcription factors and complexes considered turning points within the acute myeloid leukemia (AML) arena.

The first oral session in the acute myeloid leukemia (AML) translational research track of June 15, was given by Eliza Yankova, from the University of Cambridge, who presented collaborative studies done together with Storm Therapeutics Ltd. outlining pharmacological inhibition of METTL1 as a therapeutic strategy in AML treatment.

Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) can only be cured, to date, using allogeneic stem cell transplantation which, in turn, only works for up to 20% of patients. As calreticulin (CALR) frameshift mutations are the second most common cause of MPNs, targeting this endoplasmic reticulum resident protein is one of the strategies emerging at the forefront of hematological malignancies research.

Throughout the 2024 annual congress of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), held in Milan last week, almost all basic tracks included some reference to epigenetics, or changes to the chromatin that affect how accessible a gene is to the transcription machinery.