The 2022 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award has been awarded to Richard Hynes, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Erkki Ruoslahti, of the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, and Timothy Springer, of Harvard Medical School “for discoveries concerning the integrins, key mediators of cell-matrix and cell-cell adhesion in physiology and disease.”

Researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a new genome editing technique than can activate any gene, including those that have been silenced, allowing new drug targets and causes of drug resistance to be explored.

Investigators at Washington State University (WSU) have identified a set of eight proteins that were expressed in the serum of Ursus arctos horribilis, better known as the grizzly bear, specifically during their hibernation period. In addition to reporting new basic insights into hibernation, the study, which was published in the Sept. 21, 2022, issue of iScience, could also give clues to insulin resistance and its relationship to body fat.

Sex differences at the cellular level could explain why men respond less well to glioblastoma (GBM) treatments, according to a study led by the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (WUSTL). The researchers found that male and female GBM tumor cells had different metabolic needs. GBM cells from male surgical samples absorbed more glutamine and had different nutritional preferences for amino acids.

How well connectomic models of the brain could be used to the predict performance of a specific person on cognitive tests was influenced by sociodemographic characteristics of that person, such as age and education. The findings, which were published in the Aug. 25, 2022, issue of Nature, suggest that models of cognition “are not predicting unitary cognitive constructs, such as episodic memory. Rather, they are predicting composites: measures of these constructs intertwined with sociodemographic and clinical covariates,” first author Abigail Greene told BioWorld.

Treatment with injections of gonadotropin-releasing hormone, indicated to prevent sexual maturation deficits in Down syndrome, also reduced cognitive function impairment associated Down syndrome, also called trisomy 21.

Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body, which would seem to make it an unlikely source for an immunotherapy target. But it is where researchers from Immatics SA and the University of Pennsylvania have found a target that was expressed on stromal cells in a number of different solid tumors, but very rare in normal tissues.

Scientists have discovered a new antibiotic called evybactin that is able to selectively target Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (TB) lung infections. As described in Nature Chemical Biology on Aug. 22, 2022. the work is still at an early stage and requires further validation. But, if successful in clinical trials, evybactin could form part of a new group of specific antibiotics designed to target TB.

Research over the past decade has shown embryonic stem cells can undergo many disparate aspects of mammalian embryogenesis in vitro. But without the support of extra-embryonic stem cells that go on to form the placenta and yolk sac, development stalls. Now, two groups of researchers, led by scientists at the Weizmann Institute in Israel and Cambridge University, U.K., have taken the in vitro development of whole mouse embryos further, by adding or inducing the differentiation of trophoblast cells and extra-embryonic endoderm stem cells.