Obesity is known to be associated with metabolic and cardiovascular disorders such as insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, or heart failure, all presenting a chronic low-grade inflammatory component. The activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway appears to be linked to the development of cardio-metabolic diseases.

Abata Therapeutics Inc. has announced its second development candidate, ABA-201, which has the potential to be a disease-modifying Treg cell therapy for patients with type 1 diabetes who have remaining β cell function. Abata expects to begin clinical studies in 2025.

Researchers working at the Lady Davis Institute, Jewish General Hospital, McGill University, have combined whole-exome sequencing (WES) from nearly 300,000 samples from the multiancestry UK Biobank, with ultrasound-derived heel estimated bone mineral density (eBMD) and genome-wide association (GWAS) data to identify potential future therapeutic targets for patients with osteoporosis.

Chiesi Global Rare Diseases, a Chiesi Farmaceutici SpA business unit, has signed a co-development agreement with Aliada Therapeutics Inc.

By using machine learning techniques to scour electronic health records, researchers have identified individuals who were likely to have binge eating disorder (BED) but had not received a formal diagnosis. Genomewide association studies including such patients enabled the investigators to identify several risk variants that were correlated with BED irrespective of body mass index (BMI), which covaries with BED and is a potential confounding factor.

Bloomsbury Genetic Therapies Ltd. announced that the FDA granted orphan drug designation for its investigational liver-targeted gene therapy, BGT-OTCD, for the treatment of ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency (OTCD).

How severe a viral infection is depends on how much the virus is replicating, damaging cells as it does so, and on the response of the immune system. Or so one would think. “Some of the most severe cases of COVID-19 are happening in the absence of replicating virus,” Joseph Guarnieri told BioWorld. In work published in Science Translational Medicine on Aug. 9, 2023, Guarnieri and his colleagues have described how those severe cases unfold, even as there is no replicating virus to be found.

The role of the enzyme γ-secretase in neuronal cholesterol metabolism could have a beneficial effect on the synapse that has not yet been explored in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). On Aug. 4, 2023, scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute published a study online in Neuron that linked cholesterol levels in the brain to synaptic dysfunction in AD.

Diabetes has been associated with increased bone fracture risks, however, the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying diabetic bone fragility are not clear. In the current study, researchers from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia presented data from a study that aimed to investigate these mechanisms in murine monogenic model of type 1 diabetes (T1D).