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For many of these individuals, the response to repotrectinib lasted for several years.

“Repotrectinib can lead to long-term responses for patients with ROS1 fusion–positive lung cancers, including those who have and have not received prior targeted therapy,” said Alexander Drilon, M.D., of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who led the TRIDENT-1 study.

Treatment with repotrectinib also shrank tumors that had spread to the brain, a common location for lung metastases, the researchers reported.

Synchron on Monday plans to launch an online…


WASHINGTON, April 8 (Reuters) — Synchron Inc, a rival to Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain implant startup, is preparing to recruit patients for a large-scale clinical trial required to seek commercial approval for its device, the company’s chief executive told Reuters.

Synchron on Monday plans to launch an online registry for patients interested in joining the trial meant to include dozens of participants, and has received interest from about 120 clinical trial centers to help run the study, CEO Thomas Oxley said in an interview.

“Part of this registry is to start to enable local physicians to speak to patients with motor impairment,” he said. “There’s a lot of interest so we don’t want it to come in a big bottleneck right before the study we’ll be doing.”

“It’s not much you can do about it. Other than fight it and if you fight and you quit, then you are not gonna make it,” he said.

The founders of this Malibu-based class say it challenges the mind and body to work together, getting stronger in the process.

John Wakefield, the creator and co-founder of drumboxing in California, told KCBS, “The connection with rhythm, tying it in with motor skills, really training the brain like you train the body putting it in a situation where it has to react.”

A medication used to treat diabetes appeared to halt the progression of Parkinson’s symptoms in a phase 2 trial of people in the early stages of the disease. While more research is needed to see how large the effect is and how long it might last, the news is encouraging in the hunt for new Parkinson’s treatments.

The challenge: More than 8.5 million people worldwide are living with Parkinson’s, a progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by the loss of brain cells that produce dopamine, which helps neurons communicate.

Common Parkinson’s symptoms include tremors, stiffness, and impaired cognition. Meds that replace dopamine can help alleviate those, but they don’t address the underlying cause — the loss of dopamine neurons — and so the disease progresses.

While an estimated 5 million Americans live with a disability that is related to traumatic brain injury (TBI), there are few treatment options for TBIs, which can affect people in a number of occupations like professional sports or some military positions, as well as anyone who suffers head trauma. But scientists have now found that a protein called TDP-43 may promote nerve damage immediately following an injury. When another protein was blocked in a mouse model and in human cell lines, this TDP-43-mediated damaged was prevented and some cell death was halted. These findings, which were reported in Cell Stem Cell, could help scientists develop treatment options for TBIs.

“There’s really nothing out there that can prevent the injury or trauma to the brain that cause nerve cell damage,” said corresponding study author Justin Ichida of the University of Southern California. “In more acute stages, patients can have difficulty concentrating and have extreme sensitivity to light and noise. Long term, there is a strong correlation between traumatic brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases, which can ultimately be fatal.”