At the 2021 virtual annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO), results of the VISION trial testing the addition of Novartis AG’s radiopharmaceutical Lutetium-177-PSMA-617 (Lutetium-PSMA) to individualized standard-of-care regimens in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer improved both overall survival and radiographic progression-free survival.

Roughly a year and a half after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many unknowns remain about the future of the virus. How it will mutate, how long protection from either illness or vaccination will last, when it will cease to be a pandemic and instead be endemic, even whether the worst is still ahead. And there is also an increasing acknowledgment that there remain unknowns about SARS-CoV-2’s past.

Using advanced intravital microscopy to visualize immune cell movement within the tissues, investigators at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Melbourne have discovered that noradrenaline causes a dramatic paralysis of immune cell movement.

A collaboration aimed at identifying and developing potential new antimalarial drug candidate drugs has been announced between Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, and Janssen Pharmaceutica, with assistance from Johnson & Johnson Innovation.

LONDON – The alchemy of induced pluripotent cells has broken another barrier, delivering a model of the earliest preimplantation stages of human development, when fertilized eggs form a blastocyst.

A large-scale metabolomics study of blood samples from 11,000 people has identified common biological links among a number of chronic non-communicable diseases, opening up the possibility of countering multiple diseases simultaneously.

In the public mind, fat and unhealthy are more or less synonymous. But reality is more complicated, as reality often is. Even among individuals with a BMI of 30 or higher, somewhere between 15% and 45% have metabolism typical of much lower-weight individuals.

Scientists, despite their best efforts, have not been able to identify a way to inhibit the oncoprotein Myc. Uropathogenic Escherichia coli, though, has apparently figured it out. In the Feb. 11, 2021, online issue of Nature Biotechnology, researchers reported that an UPEC-produced protease depleted cellular Myc and improved survival in mouse models of bladder and colon cancer.

PERTH, Australia – The fight against diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma may finally see some progress, after experiments using 3D models of the tumor in animal studies showed that a combination therapy of the polyamine inhibitor AMXT-1501 (Aminex Therapeutics Inc.) and the ornithine decarboxylase 1 inhibitor difluoromethylornithine could eradicate cancer cells.

KRAS is the most frequently mutated oncogene in solid tumors in general, and in lung tumors in particular. There are more patients whose lung tumors are driven by KRAS mutations than by ALK, Ros, Ret and TRK alterations. Combined. And after 40 years, they look to be getting a targeted therapy, or even two.