Trimers of nanobodies, a simpler form of antibody made by some animal species, were effective at preventing and treating COVID-19 in preclinical studies, researchers reported in the Sept. 22, 2021, issue of Nature Communications.

Researchers have retrospectively divided more than 16,000 non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with EGFR mutations into four structure-based subgroups, and looked at how the members of each subgroup fared depending on which EGFR inhibitor they were given.

Delivering antibodies in the form of their DNA could enable their therapeutic use under several circumstances where traditional antibodies fall short. One of those is resource-poor settings where the current cost of antibodies makes them a nonstarter. Perhaps the largest opportunity to expand antibody use in such settings is for HIV, where broadly neutralizing antibodies have the potential to be the next best thing to a vaccine or a cure – if they can be made to last, for cheap.

Monoclonal antibodies are a triumph of modern medicine. They are also too expensive to be a standard therapy in all but the wealthiest countries. “Having 10% or 15% of your population on antibodies is not sustainable even in wealthy countries,” Rachel Liberatore told BioWorld. Liberatore is director of research and development at Renbio Inc., which is testing the intramuscular delivery of antibody-encoding DNA to prevent and treat infections, including SARS-CoV-2 and HIV.

In studies that give new insights into both developmental biology and the origins of melanoma, investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College have identified the activity of chromatin remodeling protein ATAD2 as necessary for cells with the oncogenic mutation V600E to give rise to melanomas.

More than half of cancers have mutations in the transcription factor p53, making p53 one of the most frequently mutated genes in solid tumors.

In Cell Metabolism, researchers working at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center reported that when fat cells (adipocytes) are chronically stressed, as is characteristic of obesity, they can release small vesicle exosomes that are respiration-competent and essentially portions of mitochondria.

Researchers from Denali Therapeutics Inc. have identified new functional links between progranulin, lysosomal function, and a subtype of frontotemporal dementia caused by progranulin deficiency (FTD-GRN) that suggest progranulin-mediated FTD could be conceptualized as a lysosomal storage disorder (LSD). They also showed that delivery of their experimental therapeutic PTV:PGRN, also known as DNL-593, reduced cell damage and symptoms of FTD in cell and animal models.

The family trees of different cell types from different tissues and organs have been traced back to the fertilized egg that gave rise to the human body of which the cells formed a part, establishing a baseline for “normal” development and aging that could help improve understanding of the onset of disease.

For most people, neither polyglutamine disorders nor neuromuscular disorders are likely to be among the things they associate with androgen receptor (AR) dysfunction. But the three are indeed linked. And researchers have reported new insights into the nature of those links that could lead to a treatment for spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy, and possibly other disorders linked to AR signaling dysfunction.