The next innovation in cancer treatment could be to test all possible drugs on thousands of miniature versions of a person’s tumour, grown in the lab, to see which works the best. The technique, sometimes called drug sensitivity testing, may have already helped a few children with advanced cancer live for longer than the standard approach.
It could eventually become routinely used for everyone with cancer, says Diana Azzam at Florida International University in Miami. “I would say it will help guide treatments in any [cancer], whether it’s aggressive or not.”
An Israeli medtech company is using artificial intelligence to help oncologists decide the best and most effective course of treatment for their cancer patients.
OncoHost’s main focus is on treatments for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). According to the World Cancer Research Fund, lung cancer is the second most common cancer (after breast cancer) and responsible for 12.2 percent of new cases of the disease.
In fact, OncoHost CEO Ofer Sharon tells NoCamels, lung cancer “is the number one killer” among patients with this form of the disease.
Researchers have developed a functional precision medicine approach that targets cancer by combining genetic testing with a new way to test individual drugs on tumor samples. The results of the clinical study were published in Nature Medicine.
Surgeons at NYU Langone have performed the world’s first whole eye transplant. The recipient can’t see out of his new eye, but it’s still healthy more than five months after the operation — putting doctors a major step closer to restoring vision with donor eyes in the future.
The patient: Aaron James, a 46-year-old military vet living in Arkansas, was working as a high-voltage lineman in 2021 when he came in contact with a live wire. The accident caused severe burns that led to the loss of his left eye, his nose, his mouth, half of his face, and his left arm from just above the elbow.
Doctors at NYU Langone became aware of Aaron’s case two months later. The hospital’s face transplant program is one of the best in the world, and after talking to Aaron, his family, and his doctors, they determined that he would be a good candidate for a partial face transplant.
Pulmonary diseases are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. For many progressive lung diseases like idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a key issue is a low supply of new stem cells to repair and reverse damage. These cells are responsible for regenerating and increasing the growth of healthy tissue—without them, lung function decreases and a range of severe illnesses can take hold.
In conventional functional MRI (fMRI), researchers monitor changes in blood flow to different brain regions to estimate activity. But this response lags by at least one second behind the activity of neurons, which send messages in milliseconds.
Park and his co-authors said that DIANA could measure neuronal activity directly, which is an “extraordinary claim”, says Ben Inglis, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley.
The DIANA technique works by applying minor electric shocks every 200 milliseconds to an anaesthetized animal. Between shocks, an MRI scanner collects data from one tiny piece of the brain every 5 milliseconds. After the next shock, another spot is scanned. The software stitches together data from all the spots, to visualize changes in an entire slice of brain over a 200-millisecond period. The process is similar to filming an action pixel by pixel, where the action would need to be repeated to record every pixel, and those recordings stitched together, to create a full video.
Study critiques the World Health Organization’s fungal priority pathogens list for not fully reflecting the global burden of fungal diseases, advocating for a revised list that considers regional disparities and elevates the priority of pathogens like Mucorales and Histoplasma spp. to better align with their impact on public health.
Comprehensive review reveals the significant impact of tumor-resident bacteria on metastatic cancer, showing how microbiome genomes influence tumor biology, immune system response, and treatment effectiveness. It lays the groundwork for utilizing bacteria-focused therapies to complement traditional cancer treatments.
Dive into this newest article featuring an unique case study of Pituitary Apoplexy in Macroadenoma following minor surgery. Explore more by tapping the link 👉
Pituitary apoplexy is a rare and severe complication of pituitary adenoma that may present with new-onset headache, ocular palsy, visual disturbances, life-threatening electrolyte imbalance, and endocrinological disturbances due to pituitary hemorrhage and/or infarction.
We report the case of a 58-year-old previously healthy patient who developed isolated mild oculomotor nerve palsy of the left eye following osteosynthesis of a traumatic right distal radius fracture. Initial cerebral magnetic resonance imaging showed a pituitary macroadenoma without characteristic signs of pituitary infarction or hemorrhage. The patient presented to the neurology department on the fifth postoperative day with malaise and fatigue due to pituitary insufficiency, deteriorated rapidly and required intensive care monitoring.
Is Chief Impact Officer for StartUp Health’s Alzheimer’s Moonshot (https://www.startuphealth.com/alzheimers), a new global initiative created to develop a collaborative innovation community alongside leading companies, research teams, and stakeholders, with a mission to accelerate progress in prevention, diagnosis, and management of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. With support from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) and Gates Ventures, StartUp Health is looking to break down silos and foster meaningful collaboration between mission-aligned founders, funders, and partners.
Dr. Ferrell also serves as Strategic Advisor, Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative (https://www.davosalzheimerscollaborat…) which is building a global clinical trial network and technology platform that will link trial sites around the world.
Prior to these roles, Dr. Ferrell served almost three decades at multiple roles at Eli Lilly including as Global Head External Engagement, Alzheimer’s and Neurodegeneration, Chief Commercial Services Officer, and Vice President, Global Alzheimer’s Disease Platform Team Leader in Lilly BioMedicines, where her team were responsible for the late-stage development, global registration and launch of 4 late-stage assets including Solanezumab, Amyvid and AZD3293.
Dr. Ferrell received a DrPH, Public Health from Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, an MBA in General Management and a certificate in Public Management from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and management from DePauw University.
Dr. Ferrell was recognized with the Rising Star Award from the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association and the Indianapolis Star Top 40 Under 40. She serves as a member of the World Dementia Council, a steering committee member of the Milken Institute Center for Aging Alliance for Dementia Care and National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF) Alzheimer’s Disease Index working groups, and a strategic reviewer for the Alzheimer’s Disease Drug Discovery Foundation Diagnostics Accelerator. She is also a member of the Indiana Chapter of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association; on the Boards of Directors for Alzheimer’s Research UK EDoN, Gates Ventures Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative, the Indiana Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, Stanford Associate Board of Governors, Indianapolis 500 Festival, and the Lebanon Area Boys \& Girls Club. She is a founding member of Women Against Alzheimer’s and Women of Impact Boone County; co-chair of the Women’s Leadership Council; the alumna sponsor of the Women in Economics and Business Program at DePauw University; a member of the Washington C. DePauw Society; a Tocqueville donor to United Way; an active supporter of Boone County Special Olympics and the Boone County Community Foundation.
