Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have developed a way to potentially increase the effectiveness of T cell–based immunotherapy treatments, such as CAR T-cell therapy, against solid tumors. T cells are specialized white blood cells of the immune system that eliminate infected or abnormal cells. In animal studies, the enhanced T-cell therapies were effective against cervical cancer and neuroblastoma, a common solid tumor in children. The findings, by scientists at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of NIH, appear in Clinical Cancer Research.

CAR T-cell therapy is a form of cellular immunotherapy that involves engineering T cells in the laboratory so they can specifically target and kill tumors. CAR T-cell therapy has been successful in treating blood cancers, but it hasn’t worked well for solid tumors. To improve the effectiveness of T-cell therapy against solid tumors, researchers at NCI’s Center for Cancer Research engineered T cells (CAR T cells and another form of cellular immunotherapy called TCR T cells) to carry cytokines, which are proteins that can boost T-cell function.

In laboratory studies, CAR and TCR T cells modified to express the cytokines IL-15 and IL-21 on their surface killed far more cancer cells than T cells carrying just one of these cytokines or neither of them. Previous research has found that treating patients with large amounts of cytokines caused severe, potentially fatal, side effects. The new approach aims to deliver this cytokine boost in a much more targeted way.

🚨 Urgent: Thousands of internet-accessible ActiveMQ instances are at risk.

HelloKitty ransomware group is actively exploiting a critical Remote Code Execution (RCE) flaw, CVE-2023–46604, in Apache ActiveMQ.

Find details here ➡️.

Continue reading “HelloKitty Ransomware Group Exploiting Apache ActiveMQ Vulnerability” »

Transplant is the only option now for liver failure, but it’s not for everyone. One Mayo Clinic M.D./Ph. D. student and her mentor are researching ways to regenerate liver cells as a possible treatment for end-stage liver disease.

“Research provides us with the understanding to develop tools to make big changes in clinical problems like those facing patients with liver failure,” says Nguyen. “I want to be on the forefront of developing medical technologies that provide alternatives. I derive a lot of passion for research through thinking about the future patients I will be treating in the clinic.”

Nguyen is a fifth-year M.D.-Ph. D. student in the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, who is also completing her Ph.D. in regenerative sciences through the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

Continue reading “Engineering stem cells to treat liver disease” »

Astronomers are currently pushing the frontiers of astronomy. At this very moment, observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are visualizing the earliest stars and galaxies in the universe, which formed during a period known as the “Cosmic Dark Ages.” This period was previously inaccessible to telescopes because the universe was permeated by clouds of neutral hydrogen.

As a result, the only light is visible today as relic radiation from the Big Bang—the cosmic microwave background (CMB)—or as the 21 cm spectral line created by the reionization of hydrogen (aka the Hydrogen Line).

Now that the veil of the Dark Ages is being slowly pulled away, scientists are contemplating the next frontier in astronomy and cosmology by observing “primordial gravitational waves” created by the Big Bang. In recent news, it was announced that the National Science Foundation (NSF) had awarded $3.7 million to the University of Chicago, the first part of a grant that could reach up to $21.4 million. The purpose of this grant is to fund the development of next-generation telescopes that will map the CMB and the gravitational waves created in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang.

That’s a great step.

LOUISVILLE, Colorado—The first Dream Chaser spaceplane built to go into orbit is starting to look the part. Its foldable wings and fuselage are covered in custom-fitted ceramic tiles to shield the spacecraft’s composite structure from the scorching heat of atmospheric reentry as it flies back to Earth. It has its landing gear, and technicians buzz around the vehicle to add the finishing touches before it leaves the factory.

Inside the spacecraft, workers are installing the final ducts for the environmental control system, which will make the pressurized compartment within Dream Chaser livable for astronauts at the International Space Station. The Dream Chaser’s job, at least for now, is to ferry cargo to and from the research complex orbiting some 240 miles (385 kilometers) above Earth. It will launch on top of a conventional rocket, maneuver in space like a satellite, and then land on a runway.

Continue reading “After decades of dreams, a commercial spaceplane is almost ready to fly” »

Year 2020 face_with_colon_three

Ah, Memories! They can be some of our best assets or our most painful tormentors. Good memories give us a sensation of warmth and hope for better times, but bad memories can cause serious trauma.

In this study we aimed to detect epigenetic and genetic loci associated with PTSD in a homogeneous cohort of traumatized police officers. Both a genome-wide and hypothesis-driven replication approach did not result in DMPs between PTSD patients and trauma-exposed controls. GSE analysis on the top 100 DMPs showed, however, a plausible association of the dopaminergic neurogenesis pathway with PTSD. Furthermore, we observed one DMR located at the PAX8 gene suggesting consistent hypermethylation in PTSD patients. Genetic analyses yielded three CpG-SNPs significantly associated with PTSD. Of these, one CpG-SNP, located at the CACNA1C locus, was also significantly associated with PTSD in an independent replication sample of trauma-exposed children. Notably, this result shows that the Illumina 450K array is not restricted to epigenetic surveys but can provide informative genetic data as well.

Although our sample was small, it was highly homogenous as all participants were former or current police officers, and cases and controls were matched for sex, age, education, and years of police service. All participants reported multiple prior traumatic events, without significant group differences in reported types of traumatic experiences. PTSD patients fulfilled current diagnostic criteria for PTSD, while our trauma-exposed controls had minimal PTSD symptoms and did not report lifetime PTSD or other trauma-related psychiatric disorders. Thus our controls were apparently resilient to adverse mental health outcome of trauma. This study design, including extreme phenotypes following similar trauma load, was considered to favor detection of PTSD-associated loci, as also suggested by others [22]. Nevertheless, our genome-wide survey clearly remains limited in statistical power.

Men with high-grade prostate cancer and low prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels have a poor prognosis. The question remains as to whether the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, which increases survival in metastatic prostate cancer, can improve the cure rate in these patients.

In a new study by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a meta-analysis of five prospective randomized clinical trials (RCTs) found that adding docetaxel to standard-of-care (SOC) treatment was associated with a 70% reduction in death from prostate cancer-specific mortality (PCSM). The study was published today in JAMA Network Open.

Investigators performed a meta-analysis of the RCTs evaluating SOC treatment with radiotherapy and androgen deprivation therapy or with radical prostatectomy versus SOC plus docetaxel. The final study cohort of 2,184 patients included 145 eligible patients (6.6%) across four eligible RCTs.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive tumor with a very poor prognosis and limited therapeutic targets. Now, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions have discovered in diverse TNBC animal models that targeting the protein elF4A with the small molecule drug Zotatifin suppressed tumor cell proliferation and remodeled the tumor immune microenvironment. The findings may lead to clinical trials to assess the potential patient benefits of this novel approach.

The team published their findings in The Journal of Clinical Investigation in an article titled, “Targeting EIF4A triggers an interferon response to synergize with chemotherapy and suppress triple-negative breast cancer.”

“Protein synthesis is frequently dysregulated in cancer and selective inhibition of mRNA translation represents an attractive cancer therapy,” wrote the researchers. “Here, we show that therapeutically targeting the RNA helicase eIF4A by Zotatifin, the first-in-class eIF4A inhibitor, exerts pleiotropic effects on both tumor cells and the tumor immune microenvironment in a diverse cohort of syngeneic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) mouse models.”