Long-term brain recordings from four patients with chronic pain have led investigators at the University of California at San Francisco to identify brain signals that could serve as biomarkers for each individual patients’ pain.
By analyzing gene expression patterns in the placenta of nearly 150 pregnancies and comparing them to fetal gene expression in the brain, researchers from the Lieber Institute for Brain Development have gained new insights into the importance of placental tissue in setting the risk trajectory for the development of schizophrenia. The work was published in Nature Communications on May 15, 2023.
Researchers have compared the cellular responses driving allergic asthma to those in individuals with allergic rhinitis and conjunctivitis but no allergic response in the lungs. Asthma is “an umbrella term,” Josalyn Cho told BioWorld. But under that umbrella, the largest group of people are those whose asthma begins in childhood. And “those folks almost exclusively develop their asthma after they develop allergies.”
Investigators have identified a second individual who remained cognitively normal into his late 60s despite having the PSEN1 E280A mutation, which causes a familial version of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The likely source of protection, a mutation in a gene called Reelin, is distinct from the protective mechanism identified in the first case of an individual who was protected from the effects of PSEN1 E280A. That case was reported in 2019.
Swiss biopharma startup Aphaia Pharma AG is taking the concept of “location, location, location” to its extreme. The company started dosing patients in a phase II trial of its lead candidate, Aph-012, in late April, 2023. The trial is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter proof-of-concept study to evaluate Aph-012’s ability to improve glucose tolerance in individuals with prediabetes, as measured by a pathological oral glucose tolerance test. In another phase II trial, Aph-012 is being tested as a weight loss drug for individuals with a BMI between 30 and 40. Aph-012’s active ingredient? Glucose. But delivered exactly to the right place.
An experimental antibiotic was able to prevent recurrent Clostridioides difficile infections (rCDI) by killing bacterial spores as well as growing spores. Researchers from the University of Notre Dame reported their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on May 8, 2023.
Blocking signaling through the ectodysplasin A2 receptor (EDA2R), a member of the TNF receptor family, protected tumor-bearing mice from developing muscle atrophy associated with cancer cachexia. Upstream and downstream of EDA2R, “we identified two distinct pathways and we demonstrated their involvement in muscle wasting,” Serkan Kir told BioWorld. Kir is a professor at the Koç University Center for Translational Medicine and corresponding author of the paper reporting the findings, which appeared in Nature on May 10, 2023.
By analyzing a cohort of adolescents that developed myocarditis or pericarditis after vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, researchers from Yale University School of Medicine were able to pinpoint the underlying mechanism as an overly active innate immune response to the vaccine that led to broad activation of T cells and natural killer (NK) cells. Myocarditis “has been seen in other vaccine contexts, though is most common after viral infection,” Carrie Lucas told reporters at a press conference announcing the findings.
A method for parallel sequencing of single-cell extrachromosomal circular DNA (ecDNA) and full-length mRNA transcriptomes has enabled new insights into the roles of ecDNA in cancer progression, researchers from Charité hospital and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine reported in Nature Genetics on May 8, 2023. Circular DNAs are present in at least a third of cancer cells, and their presence correlates with poor prognosis in many cases. They can carry driver genes that have separated themselves from their chromosome of origin, and some research suggests that they serve as “reserve copies” of driver genes. Boundless Bio Inc. is in phase I trials targeting ecDNAs.
A pill that delivers electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve from inside the stomach was able to trigger the release of appetite-controlling neurohormones, specifically the “hunger hormone” ghrelin. The work, which was described in the April 26, 2023, issue of Science Robotics, could pave the way for treating “metabolic, [gastrointestinal], and neuropsychiatric disorders noninvasively with minimal off-target effects,” the authors wrote in their paper.
