CD70 is highly expressed on drug-resistant cancer cells in EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) representing a promising new target for treatment of cancer cells that remain after a patient receives EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy. The new research from investigators at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer…

An off-the-shelf T-cell therapy has successfully treated drug-resistant viral infections in 95 percent of patients undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplants, according to final results from an open label Phase II trial. Patients that have received allogeneic bone marrow transplants have their immune system suppressed so that their body doesn’t reject…

A drug for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) designed by the Hong Kong-U.S. player Insilico Medicine with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) has shown a promising safety signal in topline results from a phase I trial. The drug discovery process is often based on trial-and-error methods that can last for…

One of the first things we learn when studying biology is that amino acids are building blocks of the cell. These simple organic compounds join together to form proteins that are essential for the regulation of the body’s tissues and organs. Proteomics–the large-scale study of proteins–has been trying to understand…

A study in rats led by Washington State University suggests that some chemotherapy drugs could impact the disease risk of later generations through epigenetic inheritance pathways. Writing in the journal iScience, the researchers found that male rats who received the chemotherapy drug ifosfamide during adolescence had offspring with increased risk…

Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), in Germany have successfully cured several patients suffering from severe systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) using genetically modified immune cells known as CAR-T cells. CAR T cells are immune cells taken from an individual patient and genetically engineered to express proteins known as CAR—chimeric antigen receptors—on…

U.S. biopharma Attralus this week reported promising findings at a scientific meeting in Germany for its therapies targeting systemic amyloidosis, a diverse group of debilitating diseases involving the build-up of amyloid in vital organs.   The findings, presented at this year’s International Symposium on Amyloidosis in Heidelberg, cover clinical and…

Amgen will acquire rare disease drug developer ChemoCentryx for $52 per share in cash, making the deal worth approximately $3.7 billion. “The acquisition of ChemoCentryx represents a compelling opportunity for Amgen to add to our decades-long leadership in inflammation and nephrology with TAVNEOS, a transformative, first-in-class treatment for ANCA-associated vasculitis,” said Robert A. Bradway, chairman and chief executive officer at Amgen.…

Today the field of digital pathology can trace its roots to the end of the last century with the development of the “virtual microscope” by a combined team of researchers at the University of Maryland’s department of computer science and researchers in the department of pathology at Johns Hopkins University…

A therapy for type 1 diabetes (T1D) that involves transplanting insulin-producing pancreatic islets from a donor into a recipient, but without the need for lifelong immunosuppression, has been developed by researchers at the University of Missouri (MU), Georgia Institute of Technology, and Harvard University. The technology uses a novel biomaterial…

Immunotherapy unleashes the immune system to fight cancer, but it doesn’t work for all patients, and newly reported research may help to explain why. The study, headed by a team at Weill Cornell Medicine, indicates that the genetic program of T lymphocyte immune cells infiltrating malignant tumors, and the developmental…

54gene and its collaborators have published their first report on the project to sequence the genomes of 100,000 Nigerians spanning 300 ethnic groups. The Non-Communicable Diseases Genetic Heritage Study (NCD-GHS) led the work, which describes the team’s strategic vision and appears in Nature Genetics this week. This data will be used…

A new large-scale genetic mapping study traces links between DNA variations and thousands of blood proteins in people of both European and African ancestry. The work was led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. It could help researchers better understand the molecular causes of diseases…

At least in women, shorter telomeres may influence the severity of COVID-19 and the risk of dying from the disease, according to new research. No significant differences were found in relative telomere length between men who survived COVID-19 and those who died of the disease. The study is from Ana…

A high-speed 3D microscope known as MediSCAPE, developed by engineers at Columbia University, can image living tissues in real time making biopsies unnecessary. Tissue biopsies, where a small section of tissue is removed from the body for further analysis, are commonly used for diagnosis of a number of different conditions,…