Lifeboat Foundation

UCLA scientists have developed a new method to engineer more powerful immune cells that can potentially be used for “off-the-shelf” cell therapy to treat challenging cancers.

“Off-the-shelf” cell therapy, also known as allogenic therapy, uses immune cells derived from healthy donors instead of patients. The approach can bring cell therapies, like chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, to more patients in a timelier manner, which is one of the major barriers in getting these life-saving treatments to patients.

“Time is often of the essence when it comes to treating people with advanced cancers,” said Lili Yang, associate professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics and member of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Currently, these types of therapies need to be tailored to the individual patient. We have to extract white blood cells from a patient, genetically engineer the cells and then re-infuse them back into the patient. This process can take weeks to months and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat each patient.”

In nationwide projections, elderly and Black adults are most at risk for cardiovascular death due to extreme heat, finds a new study. Cardiovascular deaths from extreme heat in the U.S. may more than double by the middle of the century. Without reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, that number could even triple, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation.

“Climate change and its many manifestations will play an increasingly important role on the health of communities around the world in the coming decades,” said lead study author Sameed Khatana, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a staff cardiologist at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center, both in Philadelphia. “Climate change is also a health equity issue as it will impact certain individuals and populations to a disproportionate degree and may exacerbate preexisting health disparities in the U.S.”

How much and how quickly greenhouse gas emissions increase in the next decades will determine the health impacts of extreme heat. More aggressive policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have the potential to reduce the number of people who may experience the adverse health effects of extreme heat, according to Khatana.

Researchers with the Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDs) Center at Georgia State have identified important new methods for accurately identifying possible biomarkers in adolescent brains that can reliably predict cognitive developments and psychiatric issues.

A new study, published in Nature Mental Health, represents the first large-scale analysis of its kind in which researchers analyzed functional network connectivity (FNC) across scans and identified associations with a diverse range of health measures in children. Researchers believe that inferences about early cognitive and psychiatric behaviors in children may be made using these intra-subject variabilities as a useful biomarker.

Researchers studied four scans from more than 9,000 subjects ages 9 to 11.

In a small study, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have found that positron emission tomography (PET) scans of the heart may identify people who will go on to develop Parkinson’s disease or Lewy body dementia among those at-risk for these diseases.

The findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation and led by scientists at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of NIH, may advance efforts to detect the earliest changes that years later lead to Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia.

In 34 people with Parkinson’s disease risk factors, researchers conducted PET scans of the heart to gain insight into levels of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. They found that the scans could distinguish individuals who would later be diagnosed with Parkinson’s or Lewy body dementia—both are brain diseases caused by abnormal deposits of the protein alpha-synuclein that form clumps known as Lewy bodies. The research was conducted at the NIH Clinical Center, currently the only location for ¹⁸ F-dopamine PET scanning.

Germany: A recent study published in the International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology has shown the effectiveness of the probiotic treatment with Enterococcus faecalis in reducing the symptoms of allergic rhinitis after four weeks.

The results are in line with similar studies showing the beneficial effects of E. faecalis. Furthermore, the data showed that allergic symptoms were alleviated during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. This is in line with previous studies and might be explained by a reduced confrontation with pollen due to masks, psychological factors, or lockdown situations.

Although allergic rhinitis treatment has been proven to be effective, it is expensive, does not completely resolve symptoms, and is related to side effects. Previous studies have indicated that probiotics may be a new promising treatment for allergic rhinitis. Michael Schaefer, Medical School Berlin, Berlin, Germany, and colleagues aimed to evaluate the effects of a single bacterial strain, Enterococcus faecalis on symptoms of allergic rhinitis. Beneficial effects of E. faecalis have been reported before but not in seasonal allergic rhinitis.

Washington [US], March 5 (ANI): A team of researchers from Michigan State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine made a discovery that may have significance for therapeutic gene editing strategies, cancer diagnostics and therapies and other advancements in biotechnology. Kathy Meek, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and collaborators at Cambridge University and the National Institutes of Health have uncovered a previously unknown aspect of how DNA double-stranded breaks are repaired.

A large protein kinase called DNA-PK starts the DNA repair process; in their new report, two distinct DNA-PK protein complexes are characterized, each of which has a specific role in DNA repair that cannot be assumed by the other.

“It still gives me chills,” says Meek. “I don’t think anyone would have predicted this.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention on patterns of infectious disease spillover. Climate and land-use changes are predicted to increase the frequency of zoonotic spillover events, which have been the cause of most modern epidemics. Characterising historical trends in zoonotic spillover can provide insights into the expected frequency and severity of future epidemics, but historical epidemiological data remains largely fragmented and difficult to analyse. We utilised our extensive epidemiological database to analyse a specific subset of high-consequence zoonotic spillover events for trends in the annual frequency and severity of outbreaks. Our analysis, which excludes the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, shows that the number of spillover events and reported deaths have been increasing by 4.98% (confidence interval [CI]95% [3.22%; 6.76%]) and 8.7% (CI 95% [4.06%; 13.62%]) annually, respectively. This trend can be altered by concerted global efforts to improve our capacity to prevent and contain outbreaks. Such efforts are needed to address this large and growing risk to global health.

The immune system is a complex network of cells with critical functions in health and disease. However, a comprehensive census of the cells comprising the immune system is lacking. Here, we estimated the abundance of the primary immune cell types throughout all tissues in the human body. We conducted a literature survey and integrated data from multiplexed imaging and methylome-based deconvolution. We also considered cellular mass to determine the distribution of immune cells in terms of both number and total mass. Our results indicate that the immune system of a reference 73 kg man consists of 1.8 × 10¹² cells (95% CI 1.5–2.3 × 10¹²), weighing 1.2 kg (95% CI 0.8–1.9). Lymphocytes constitute 40% of the total number of immune cells and 15% of the mass and are mainly located in the lymph nodes and spleen. Neutrophils account for similar proportions of both the number and total mass of immune cells, with most neutrophils residing in the bone marrow. Macrophages, present in most tissues, account for 10% of immune cells but contribute nearly 50% of the total cellular mass due to their large size. The quantification of immune cells within the human body presented here can serve to understand the immune function better and facilitate quantitative modeling of this vital system.

Metabolites called nucleotides are the building blocks of DNA and can impact cancer’s sensitivity or resistance to chemotherapy and radiation in brain cancer. Findings from researchers at the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center, published in Cancer Discovery, show how a specific nucleotide metabolite, called GTP, controls responses to radiation and chemotherapy in an unexpected way.

“We learned that if you increase a cell’s GTP levels, it makes it really resistant to radiation or chemotherapy. Lowering GTP levels, the cell becomes much more sensitive,” said Daniel Wahl, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of radiation oncology at Michigan Medicine and senior author of this paper.

Researchers have long known that levels of nucleotides like GTP control how fast DNA damage is repaired, which in turn controls sensitivity to therapies.