BioWorld looks at translational medicine, including: Reversal of pumping direction is reversal of fortune for tumor cells; Cholesterol drug affects checkpoint blockade via MHC1; Heart development protein has role in adult immunity.
Investigators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have identified physiological factors that are not diseases in the narrow sense, but that nevertheless have large effects on microbiome composition.
One of the reasons that pancreatic cancer remains such a stubbornly dismal disease is that it is extremely desmoplastic. In other words, most of a pancreatic tumor is not made up of tumor cells, but of stroma. Stroma, in turn, is a double-edged sword for the tumor cells. Its connective tissue component impedes blood flow, which is part of what makes pancreatic cancer so drug-resistant. But the lack of blood also means a lack of oxygen and nutrients, so pancreatic tumors must find alternate ways to feed themselves. That’s where nerves come in. In the Nov. 2, 2020, online issue of Cell, researchers published new insights into how innervation feeds tumors, and how to stop them from doing so.
CYBERSPACE – “We are not very good at predicting drug response in the clinic,” Ayesha Muhammad told the audience at the 2020 annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), “though it is not for lack of trying.” Nevertheless, adverse drug reactions are among the top 10 causes of in-hospital mortality.
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