Spirits were high at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), buoyed by U.S. FDA approval of the first two gene therapies for sickle cell disease (SCD) the day before the conference kicked off in San Diego.

Intracellular chloride levels are crucial for physiological brain development and correct functioning. On the other hand, aberrant expression of chloride importer NKCC1 (basolateral Na-K-Cl symporter, SLC12A2) and exporter KCC2 (K-Cl cotransporter 2, SLC12A5) is involved in neurodevelopmental and neurologic conditions, including mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE), among others, leading to an imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory signals.

One of the difficulties for preventing the evolution of a tumor is that cancer progression can be promoted by undifferentiated or migrating cells whose states could follow different directions. At the 40th edition of Barcelona Biomed conferences at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), which took place from Nov. 27 to 29, 2023, and is entitled “Cancer in Context: Cellular, Tissue, and Organismal Determinants of Malignant Fates,” Angela Nieto presented her latest data on epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT).

Researchers from Nagoya City University presented the development of a new mouse model with cholinergic dysfunction and amyloid pathogenesis for Alzheimer's disease.