By using roughly 400 data points, from molecular to physical fitness, researchers have gained new insights into how organs such as the heart vs. the skin, and systems such as the immune and metabolic systems, age at different rates within individuals.

By combining an activator of the pro-apoptotic protein Bax with an inhibitor of the anti-apoptotic protein BCL-XL, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have been able to overcome resistance to apoptosis in both a wide range of cell lines and animal studies. The team reported its findings in the March 7, 2022, issue of Nature Communications.

“In 2015, when I started in this field…. people considered breast cancer a cold tumor,” Marleen Kok told the audience at the European Society of Medical Oncology’s 2022 Targeted Anticancer Therapy meeting (ESMO TAT). But the sensitivity of breast cancer to immunotherapy, or lack thereof, is “not a black and white phenomenon.”

By using engineered retinal pigment epithelial cells to deliver IL-2 into the tumor microenvironment, investigators at Rice University eradicated ovarian and colorectal tumors in mouse models, and elicited T-cell responses after implantation in primates.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital have identified peripheral neuropathy in more than half of a group of long COVID patients, suggesting that it may be a mechanism that contributes to multiple, seemingly disparate, long COVID symptoms.

A study from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Karolinska Institute has shown that individuals who carry the major genetic risk variant for severe COVID-19 infection are less likely to contract HIV.

Antibiotic treatment that changed the lung microbiome affected the activity of microglia, the brain-specific version of macrophages, and could prevent the development of the multiple sclerosis model experimental autoimmune encephalitis in mice.

Researchers at Inserm have developed a method to direct pre-existing antibodies toward new targets. Their bimodular fusion proteins could be a broadly useful method for expanding access to antibody therapy. In a study that appeared in the Feb. 11, 2022, issue of Science Advances, the teams showed that antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which are present in 95% of the global population, could be redirected to a target cell of their choosing by fusing an EBV antigen to a cellular targeting ligand.

Researchers at Inserm have developed a method to direct pre-existing antibodies toward new targets. Their bimodular fusion proteins could be a broadly useful method for expanding access to antibody therapy. In a study that appeared in the Feb. 11, 2022, issue of Science Advances, the teams showed that antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which are present in 95% of the global population, could be redirected to a target cell of their choosing by fusing an EBV antigen to a cellular targeting ligand.