With age, senescent cells become detrimental to tissues. Mayo Clinic scientists have observed this phenomenon in the lung alveoli, where senescent macrophages accumulated in aging tissue and in early stages of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) driven by the Kras oncogene. “We found that the macrophages were present in the earliest stages of the disease. Strategies targeting these cells for elimination or preventing their accumulation would be worthwhile to test in other conditions (assuming we find they occur),” Darren Baker, a Mayo Clinic senescent cell biologist and senior author of the study, told BioWorld.
A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) in Switzerland and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany has succeeded in developing a fully biodegradable nanoparticle able to deliver a new anti-inflammatory drug directly into macrophages where an uncontrolled inflammatory response has been triggered.
Scientists at the University of Connecticut have made progress in understanding the role of the targetable TRPM2 channel in the context of atherosclerosis, as they report in the March 28, 2022, issue of Nature Cardiovascular Research.
Pfizer Inc. has turned up the temperature in the already hot CD47 inhibitor space by offering $18.50 per share or $2.26 billion cash to acquire Trillium Therapeutics Inc., a biotech with two clinical-stage CD47 inhibitors.
Researchers have identified an evolutionarily conserved metabolic role for tissue-resident macrophages, they reported in the July 2, 2021, issue of Science. In a commentary published alongside the paper, Conan O’Brien and Ana Domingos from the University of Oxford asserted that the work “introduces a new, macrophage-centered paradigm in… energy storage.”
A packaged nanoparticle that delivered a relaxin-encoding gene therapy with microRNA reduced liver fibrosis, researchers in the laboratory of Leaf Huang at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Eshelman School of Pharmacy described in the Jan. 21, 2021, issue of Nature Nanotechnology.
Shares of immunotherapy developer Enlivex Therapeutics Ltd. (NASDAQ:ENLV) climbed as much as 69% Dec. 3 after interim data showed the apparent benefits of its lead candidate, Allocetra, for severe and critical COVID-19 patients.
