Romidepsin, a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor and FDA-approved lymphoma drug, reversed the social deficits of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a mouse model of the condition.

In cell lines directly generated from patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-rearranged non-small-cell lung cancers that were resistant to second-generation ALK inhibitors, multiple different bypass resistance mutations ultimately converged on the same signaling mode to increase cell growth.

One theory for how antidepressants exert their effects, and why they take weeks to do so, is that they stimulate the growth of new neurons in the brain, in particular in the hippocampus.

BOSTON – Long-term control of HIV without the need for ongoing antiretroviral therapy (ART), even though it is not a cure, would be a major milestone for HIV treatment. At the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) this week, researchers suggested that it may be possible to find treatments that induce such long-term control, through a combination of ART and broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs).

BOSTON – Curing HIV infection has become a realistic goal, and one of the major areas of HIV research, since the first Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was held in 1993. But for such a cure to become a reality, it will be necessary to eliminate the viral reservoir.

BOSTON – An individual's microbiome is now recognized as a major factor in health, disease, and the effectiveness of medical treatment. At her Tuesday morning plenary talk at the 2018 Conference for Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), Nichole Klatt, assistant professor in the University of Washington's Department of Pharmaceutics, gave an overview of the female vaginal microbiome's role in both HIV infection and treatment.

BOSTON – Has biomedicine learned from the HIV epidemic? Yes and no. Certainly, Biomedicine has learned how to deal with HIV.

Synthetic biologists have managed to design multipass transmembrane proteins whose structures were stable, and very close to their computationally predicted structures. The authors said their work "pave[s] the way for the design of multispan membrane proteins with new functions."

In the Feb. 28, 2018, issue of Science Translational Medicine, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill describe an antigen that might enable the cells' use in the majority of cases of glioblastoma multiforme.