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Drug Design, Drug Delivery & Technologies

Synthetic cell junctions allow tissue reconstruction

Dec. 13, 2022
By Mar de Miguel
A combination of bioengineering techniques on normal cell binding proteins could be the method of the future for selective cell binding. Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have created a synthetic glue based on the expression of membrane receptors to establish the desired connection between cells. The results may be applied in different fields of cell biology or biomedicine, such as regeneration and wound repair, including the nervous system, or cancer.
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Fat targeting illustration
Endocrine/Metabolic

Nanomaterial allows location-specific fat targeting

Dec. 7, 2022
By Anette Breindl
The positively charged nanoparticle polyamidoamine generation 3 (P-G3) can be specifically targeted to either visceral or subcutaneous fat, and affects both types of fat in different ways, researchers from Columbia University reported in two papers recently published. The studies, published online in Nature Nanotechnology on Dec. 1, 2022, and in Biomaterials on Nov. 28, 2022, are both “a conceptual advance” and “quite amenable to translation,” co-corresponding author Kam Leong told BioWorld.
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Illustration of cancer cells and immunotherapy treatment
Cancer

New hydrogel-based delivery platform exploits gasdermin-induced tumor pyroptosis to kill tumor cells

Dec. 7, 2022
Previous research has shown that cytotoxic lymphocytes rely on gasdermin-mediated pyroptosis to kill tumor cells. Pyroptosis appears to be closely involved in anticancer immune response and has therefore emerged as a promising strategy for cancer treatment. In a recently published study, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison aimed to leverage gasdermin-triggered pyroptosis for antitumor immunotherapy.
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2D nanoparticles
Drug Design, Drug Delivery & Technologies

Ligand-switchable nanoparticles improve oral liver-targeted delivery of insulin peptides

Dec. 5, 2022
Steric hindrance and electrostatic interactions often prevent the subsequent development of clinically relevant nanoparticles to the in vivo stage. Researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have now demonstrated the development of nanoparticles exhibiting pH-sensitive properties triggering the stretching of peptides to reveal accessible liver-targeted ligands that can deliver biologically active peptides in vivo.
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Illustration of cell dividing
Drug Design, Drug Delivery & Technologies

Computational platform identifies chemicals to trigger cell conversion

Nov. 29, 2022
By Helen Albert
A computational platform that used single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data could quickly predict the best chemical compounds to use to convert cells from one type into another for use in research or cell therapies. The work, published in the Nov. 17, 2022, issue of Stem Cell Reports, was a collaboration between the lab of Hongkui Deng, a professor and director of the Key Laboratory of Cell Proliferation and Differentiation at Peking University in Beijing, and the lab of Antonio del Sol, a professor at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine at the University of Luxembourg.
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Scientist, microscope and dropper
Drug Design, Drug Delivery & Technologies

Nona and Dragonfly establish drug discovery collaboration

Nov. 21, 2022
Nona Biosciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of HBM Holdings Ltd., has entered into a collaboration agreement with Dragonfly Therapeutics Inc. based on Nona's proprietary fully human heavy chain only antibody (HCAb) transgenic mice platform to discover and develop fully human heavy chain only antibodies for bispecific/multi-specific therapeutic antibody generation.
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Cancer

Advances in cancer research trap the impenetrable MYC

Nov. 9, 2022
By Mar de Miguel
Myc-associated factor X (MAX), the protein that forms dimers with Myc, could hold the key to blocking one of the most intractable oncogenes. Scientists at the University of Chicago have designed a synthetic molecule that effectively mimics a module of MAX's binding domain. In parallel, the Omomyc protein OMO-103, developed by researchers at the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) in Barcelona, successfully completed a phase I clinical trial. From different therapeutic perspectives, both approaches corner Myc and predict the advance of this slow line of research.
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