In a study published in Nature on Oct. 11, coinciding with the beginning of IDWeek 2023 in Boston, researchers from Harvard Medical School described EVEscape, a method for anticipating the movements of SARS‑CoV‑2 by predicting potential mutations likely to escape current vaccines and treatments.
In a study published in Nature on Oct. 11, coinciding with the beginning of IDWeek 2023 in Boston, researchers from Harvard Medical School described EVEscape, a method for anticipating the movements of SARS‑CoV‑2 by predicting potential mutations likely to escape current vaccines and treatments.
The contribution of the soluble form of urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) as a risk factor for chronic kidney diseases (CKD) is well known. Researchers from Rush University Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and collaborators have now identified D2D3, a suPAR fragment, as responsible for causing double injury, both to the kidney and pancreas, thus resulting in glomerular disease and insulin-dependent diabetes.
Researchers from Harvard Medical School, Yale University and University of Leiden have uncovered two new potential biomarkers of dysregulated glucose metabolism in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Glucose hypometabolism is consistently observed in AD but the molecular changes behind this are unclear. Findings from recent research have indicated dysregulation of glycolysis markers in AD cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and tissue.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have developed a new tool that promises to improve the way pathologists see and evaluate a tumor, by providing detailed clues about the cancer.
A single low-dose injection with anti-DLL4 in a nonhuman primate model of acute graft-vs.-host disease (aGVHD) dramatically improved post-transplant survival, providing durable protection from otherwise lethal gastrointestinal GVHD, researchers reported in the June 28, 2023, issue of Science Translational Medicine. Blocking DLL4 specifically increased the migration of beneficial regulatory T cells into the intestines, with concomitant reduction in effector T cells, which are the main culprits in aGVHD. Ultimately, these activities effectively provided protection against T-cell-mediated damage in a nonhuman macaque primate model.
B cells that expressed a constellation of checkpoint inhibitors could be spurred into antitumor activity by deleting or blocking the checkpoint molecule T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain 1 (TIM-1). The findings, which were published online in Nature on June 21, 2023, suggest ways to bring B cells into the antitumor fight. More broadly, Lloyd Bod told BioWorld, his laboratory aims to “break the dogma that B cells only produce antibodies.”
A group of scientists from the Center for Stem Cell and Translational Immunotherapy, Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School have developed an antitumor immunotherapy that uses oncolytic viruses and stem cells for the treatment of metastatic brain melanoma.
Currently, there are no treatments to reverse or prevent genetic hearing loss, which affects 1 in 500 newborns. Several gene replacement and overexpression preclinical studies targeting genetic hearing loss have shown success, as the inner ear can be accessed safely by local injection. However, all these gene therapy studies have been performed in neonatal animals, except one in the Otof gene; therefore, the suitability of the approach in the fully mature adult inner ear remains to be elucidated.
