For the time being, the promise of biomarkers has, by and large, not been realized. Although it has been recognized for decades that good biomarkers could greatly improve both resource allocation and patient outcomes, very few biomarkers have sufficient clinical utility to be in widespread use.
Using a minimally invasive gene delivery method, researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute have managed to directly reprogram regular heart muscle cells into cells of the heart's main pacemaker, the sinoatrial node, in pigs.
Successful organ transplantation starts with a race against time. When a donor organ becomes available, the current way to keep it going long enough for it to reach its lucky next owner is quite simple. It is flushed with a solution that was developed at the University of Wisconsin – hence its name, UW solution – and put on ice.
The notion of a broad-spectrum T cell may, at first blush, sound like an oxymoron. The T and B cells of the adaptive immune system are, after all, best known for their exquisite specificity.
As increasing bacterial drug resistance threatens to usher in a post-antibiotic era, one strategy being explored is so-called host-directed therapy – trying to give the immune system of an infected person a leg up against what ails them.
One problem with the market for antibiotics is that it's not big enough to make developing those products truly worthwhile. Another is that if it were big enough, really, companies still shouldn't sell them. At least not in a way that will help make a return on their investments.
In findings that report counterintuitive results about both the anticoagulant heparin and the receptor tyrosine kinase ERK, scientists at Duke University have shown that by treating animals with a heparin derivative, they were able to increase the differentiation of immature cells in an animal model of neuroblastoma.
Inducing T cells to be more active against tumor cells is currently one of the most exciting areas of tumor biology. (See story this issue, and BioWorld Today, Dec. 12, 2014.)
