ORLANDO, Fla. – Precision medicine has replaced personalized medicine as the catchphrase of the day, with the change often being explained on the grounds that medicine has always been personalized.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Genentech Inc. and Abbvie Inc.'s BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax in relapsed and refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is one of the stars of this year's annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH).

Researchers at Harvard Medical School have applied the synthetic lethal approach of identifying gene interactions to bacteria, identifying a protein that was not, by itself, critical for Staphylococcus aureus survival, but sensitized the bacterium to aminoglycoside antibiotics.

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and Synthetic Biologics Inc. have produced humanized monoclonal antibodies that bound pertussis toxin and prevented or mitigated whooping cough in mice and baboons by binding to its major toxin.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are young cells created by reprogramming old cells into a stem cell-like state via various transcription factor cocktails. And for many applications – certainly for any involving transplantation – the rejuvenation of iPSCs is one of their selling points. But for studying age-related diseases, turning back the clock in such cells means giving up important information.

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have reported they were able to accelerate diabetic wound healing through a combination of inhibiting one matrix metalloproteinase (MMP), and that the wound healing was further accelerated if they simultaneously administered another, MMP8. They published their results in the Nov. 23, 2015, online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers at Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc. and the University of California at San Diego have reported on a STAT3-targeting antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) that "produced robust antisense-mediated inhibition of target RNA molecules in tumors of several preclinical models, and demonstrated single-agent antitumor activity in several highly refractory cancer patients in a phase I dose-escalation study," corresponding author Robert MacLeod told BioWorld Today.

To skeptics, looking for cancer drugs by screening cell lines is the equivalent of searching for your lost wallet under a street lamp. The types of cells that can be cultured, the argument goes, are different in critical ways from those that can't, and any knowledge gleaned from them is likely to lead drug developers down a primrose path that ends in clinical failure.