SAN DIEGO – Broadening the repertoire of anti-angiogenesis approaches might allow the method to be used in more cancer types, and more successfully in cancer types where it's already used.

SAN DIEGO – The crowds had thinned by the last day of the annual meeting of the 53rd Annual American Society of Hematology meeting, but the research being presented had gotten no less interesting.

SAN DIEGO – Pharmacyclics Inc. grabbed the spotlight on Friday with a $150 million up-front deal that could reach a total of $975 million with Janssen Biotech Inc. for Phase II hematologic cancer drug PCI-32765. At the 53rd Annual American Society of Hematology meeting, hematologists and investors got to see some of what all the fuss is about.

Researchers have discovered that two proteins best known for their roles in fighting infection play a role in cognitive processes, in particular in memory formation. The double-stranded RNA-activated protein kinase, or PKR, and interferon gamma "are controlling, in the brain, the kind of processes that lead to memory formation," Mauro Costa-Mattioli told BioWorld Today.

Anti-angiogenesis is one of the granddaddy strategies against tumors. But ironically, increasing blood flow, too, has its place in cancer therapy.

Metabotropic glutamate receptor functioning, and malfunctioning, has been implicated in a number of brain disorders, including schizophrenia, anxiety and autism.

Testing for specific mutations has already entered the clinical oncology landscape. Cancer drugs such as Zelboraf (vemurafenib, Roche AG and Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd.) and Xalkori (crizotinib, Pfizer Inc.) target patients with specific mutations. Earlier in development, some clinical trials, such as for Exelixis Inc.'s cabozantinib, have focused on specific mutations across a variety of tumor types.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, reported last week that they have been able to induce long-lasting T-cell responses to melanoma cells by engineering not the T cells themselves, but their progenitor cells.

On this World AIDS Day, there are grounds for optimism.

Genetic alterations that have opposing effects on neural activity can lead to disorders that superficially look very similar, and lead to similar behavioral issues.